Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Jason C Knichel

Adam Joseph Lenart

James George Cavalaris

Samuel David Adams

Shyamal Kaushik Varma

Alessandro Domenico Scarpantoni

Ajay Preetham Barboza

David J Roth

Chad R Siefert

The present disclosure relates to devices and methods for creating one or more proxy devices in a guest device mirroring the devices hosted by a host device. The proxy devices may provide full device access functionality to applications running in the guest device. The devices and methods may load a proxy driver inside the guest device, which communicates with the host device. When applications running on the guest device interact with the proxy devices, the proxy driver communicates the interaction to the host device, which communicates with the device driver managing the device. The devices and methods allow applications running on the host and applications running on the guest to shares access to the same device.

Providing device abstractions to applications inside a virtual machine

In one or more embodiments, hardware configuration state data for specialization of a portable installation of an operating system may be stored on a per hardware configuration basis. Specializations may include designation of boot start drivers, driver settings, device settings, and other state data that may vary based on hardware configurations of different machines on which the portable operating system is loaded. In a pre-boot environment, an identity of the current computing device is resolved and used to look-up corresponding hardware configuration state data that is available. When booting of the operating system on a new computing device is detected, the operating system is loaded using default state settings. An optimization routine may then be performed to create and store hardware specific hardware configuration state data for the computing device that defines specializations for subsequent boots of the operating system on the computing device.

Operating system hardware configuration state specialization

An update platform is described that collectively handles driver and firmware updates for hardware resources of a computing device based on dependencies associated with the updates. The update platform may instantiate representations of each individual hardware resource as abstractions through which detection, analysis, acquisition, deployment, installation, and tracking of updates is managed. Using the representations, the update platform discovers available updates, matches configuration packages for the updates to appropriate resources, and initiates installation of the configuration packages. The update platform is further configured to recognize dependencies associated with the configuration packages. When dependencies are detected, corresponding configuration packages are marked to reflect the dependencies and activation is suspended until the dependencies are satisfied. Upon satisfaction of the dependencies, the dependencies are cleared and the configuration packages are activated. Configuration packages that are not associated with dependencies may be installed and activated 'normally' at any time.

Dependency based configuration package activation

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Jason C Knichel