From: Paul Bunn [paul@ultrabac.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 1999 12:10 PM
To: 'ntdev@atria.com'
Subject: RE: [ntdev] QUERY: Access to NT Blue Screen.!

If you must get user input (in the form of keyboard input) before the rest
of the system initializes, then you need to write your application as a
NATIVE application.  Note that a native application is a user-mode
application, that executes because of a registry entry at
HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\control\session manager\BootExecute.  This UM
program could interface to your device driver, obviously as it is run after
all boot class drivers are loaded and initialized.  There have been articles
written either on www.sysinternals.com or www.osr.com that detail how to
write an NT native application.  Note that you cannot run a native
application from within NT ordinarily (run AUTOCHK.EXE to see what I mean).
Normally, the native application that initializes NT is SMSS.EXE and I guess
this is invoked after all the "BootExecute" programs have completed.

Regards,

Paul Bunn, UltraBac.Com, 425-644-6000
Microsoft MVP - WindowsNT
http://www.ultrabac.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Max Lyadvinsky [mailto:lovetown@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 11:50 PM
To: ntdev@atria.com
Cc: vasu@amiindia.co.in
Subject: Re: [ntdev] QUERY: Access to NT Blue Screen.!


Why not to try storing initialization data in the registry?
Anyway, you can write to the blue screen with the NtDisplayString routine:
NtDisplayString(PCHAR pString);
And read the user input by means of reading keyboard port 0x60.
But this way is really unusual.

To start your driver first create your own group and add it to the
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GroupOrderList.
Then to specify that your group should be processed first add its name to 
the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ServiceGroupOrder\List multistring

before other groups.

Max Lyadvinsky

>From: "Vasudevan S." <vasu@amiindia.co.in>
>To: ntdev@atria.com
>Subject: [ntdev] QUERY: Access to NT Blue Screen.!
>Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 22:03:06 +0530
>
>Hi All,
>
>I am wondering if I can use the Initial Blue screen to get data from the
>user as AUTOCHK does at the beginning of NT boot process. I would like
>to do some initializations in my device driver based on the user input
>that I get at the boot time. So I would like to make my device driver to
>start at Boot time and get the user input.
>
>Also, How could I make my device driver to load first among all the
>drivers that load at boot time.?
>
>Any help would be greatly appreciated.!
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