Driver Signing in Windows Millennium Edition

All of the drivers shipped with Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), as well as those qualified by the Microsoft Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL) and published on the Windows Update Web site with Code Download Manager (CDM) technology, are digitally signed. This digital signature ensures overall driver quality, which contributes to a stable operating system. Driver signing allows the operating system to inform you of possible problems that may occur when installing unsigned and untested drivers, which can cause error messages or poor performance.

Microsoft gives a driver a digital signature after it has passed certain testing criteria set by WHQL. These criteria ensure that all signed drivers meet specific quality standards. These standards are designed to prevent drivers from harming your computer system, or from having either faulty operation or interaction with Windows Me.

There are two ways to determine whether a device driver for a device on your computer is signed. You can either examine device properties in Device Manager or you can use the File Signature Verification tool.

• To use Device Manager to verify that a specific device driver is signed, follow these steps:
  
  
  1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
  2. In the System Properties window, click the Device Manager tab.
  3. Click + next to the device category of the device driver you want to examine.
  4. Right-click the device and click Properties.
  5. In the Device Properties window, click the Driver tab.
  6. If the device driver is signed, "Microsoft Consumer Windows Publisher" is displayed in the Digital Signer category.
• To use the File Signature Verification tool to verify that all device drivers used by Windows Me are signed, follow these steps:
  
  
  1. On the Start menu, click Run.
  2. In the Open box, type:
     sigverif
  3. Press Enter or click OK.
  4. In the File Signature Verification Tool window, click Start or press ALT+S.
  5. After the the tool is finished scanning, the results are displayed in the Signature Verification Results window in the following format:

     Name        In Folder       Modified  File Type          Version
     Generic.inf C:\Windows\Inf  6/8/2000  Setup Information  None
     								

  In the File Signature Verification tool, you can use the Advanced File Signature Verification settings to:
  
  
  • Configure the system to display dialog box notification when unsigned system files are found.
  • Specify additional file types to monitor for signing.
  • Configure the system to log driver signing information to a text file, as it is detected.
  • View the driver signing log file.
  • Specify a different file to log driver signing.