Definition

virtual device driver

In certain Microsoft operating systems, a virtual device driver is a program that handles software interrupts from the operating system (rather than hardware interrupts) for each of the computer's main hardware devices, including the hard disk drive controller, keyboard, and serial and parallel ports. A virtual device driver is used to maintain the status of a hardware device that has changeable settings.

A virtual device driver usually has a file name suffix of VXD.

Related glossary terms: dynamic link library (DLL), HPFS (High Performance File System), Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), ISA (Industry Standard Architecture), ASPI driver (Advanced SCSI Programming Interface driver), incident management (IcM), red screen of death, PXE (Preboot Execution Environment), Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), MetaFrame

This was last updated in September 2006

Posted by: Margaret Rouse

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