The FASTINST Sample

The FASTINST Sample accompanies Chapter 12 and illustrates how to write a simple setup program for Windows 2000. The real purpose of FASTINST is to allow you (and me!) to quickly install a sample driver.

The sample includes one component:

Building FASTINST

To build FASTINST.EXE, follow the general instructions for building user-mode programs. The Microsoft Visual C++ project file is named FASTINST.DSP.

Testing FASTINST

It’s not necessary for you to specifically install FASTINST because the setup program for the book samples does this for you. If you rebuild FASTINST, your new copy will be used the next time you invoke it.

The setup program automatically associates FASTINST as the Open method for INF files. You can therefore invoke FASTINST simply by double-clicking on an INF file’s icon from Explorer.

You can also invoke FASTINST from a command prompt, as follows:

C:\WDMBOOK\Chap12\FastInst\debug>fastinst infpath [devid]

where infpath is the pathname of the INF file you want to install and devid is an optional device identifier. If you omit the devid parameter, FASTINST installs the first (or only) device in the file. If you supply the devid parameter, FASTINST will install the designated device.