WinPMC

SUMMARY

This device driver enables and controls access to the Performance Monitor Counters and the RDPMC assembly instruction on Pentium MMX class processors from a user application.

The driver building and installation instructions given here only apply to Windows® 2000.

BUILDING THE DRIVER

Note: To build this driver, it is assumed that you have already installed a current version of the Windows DDK toolkit. In the past, the toolkit was available at http://www.microsoft.com/ddk/. Now it can be requested from that website, or found on someone's subscription to MSDN. There are two ways to build the WinPMC driver. The first uses the command line. It is the simplest and quickest. The second requires more setup, but is well integrated with the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment.

BUILDING WITH THE COMMAND LINE

Click the Free Build Environment or Checked Build Environment icon under your Developement Kits program group to set basic environment variables needed by the build utility.

Change to the directory containing the device source code. By default this is:
>CD C:\papi\src\win2k\winpmc.

The First Time

Run build -ceZ, or use the macro BLD. This behavior invokes the Microsoft make routines that produce log files called Buildxxx.log, and also Buildxxx.wrn and Buildxxx.err if there are any warnings or errors. Where xxx stands for fre or chk depending on the environment chosen. If the build succeeds, the driver WinPMC.sys will be placed in a platform specific subdirectory of your %TargetPath% directory specified in the Sources file. By default, this will be:
>CD C:\papi\src\win2k\winpmc\sys\[objchk objfre]\i386\.

Driver Installation

To install the driver, run the batch file instpmc.bat found in the winpmc directory. This batch file copies the driver to C:\WINNT\system32\drivers, invokes the included ntaddsvc application to modify the registry, and invokes net start to load the driver.
Note: It may be necessary to edit the batch file if your directory structure does not match the default.

Successive Builds

After the first build and installation, use bldpmc.bat within the Checked or Free Build Environment. This batch file unloads the current driver; builds a new one; copies it to the drivers directory; and reloads the driver for execution and testing.

Note: It may be necessary to edit the batch files if your directory structure does not match the default.

MICROSOFT VISUAL STUDIO

If you are using Microsoft Visual Studio, you may find the above process to be clumsy and counter-intuitive. A batch file, ddkbuild.bat, is available from HollisTech that simplifies this process and integrates it into the Visual Studio environment. This batch file and supporting documentation is available here: http://www.hollistech.com/Resources/ddkbuild/ddkbuild.htm.

The batch file itself must be installed somewhere that Visual Studio can find it. On my computer it's in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\Tools.

In addition, an environment variable must be defined as specified in the HollisTech documentation. This variable must point to your installation of the DDK. For simplicity, the variable I use is WKBASE == C:\WINDDK\3790. To define this variable, go to Start->Setting->Control Panel->System->Advanced->Environment Variables and define a new system variable with a definition appropriate for your installation.

The third piece of the puzzle is the modification of the project itself. This has already been done for the WinPMC project inside the WinPAPI Shell Solution. It is also described in detail in the HollisTech documentation. As a quick review, the settings expected for the NMake Configuration Properties of this project are:

Build Command Line: ddkbuild -W2K free .
Rebuild Command Line: ddkbuild -W2K free . /a
Output: WinPMC.sys

The same settings apply for the debug version, with the substitution of the word 'checked' for the word 'free'.

To install the newly made driver, run one of the supplied batch files found at C:\papi\src\win2k\winpmc\[instpmcfre.bat, instpmcchk.bat]. These can be configured as external tools in the Tools menu of Visual Studio.

TESTING

To test your WinPMC driver, run the WinPMCTest application found in the winpmc directory. Items in the Test menu will exercise various aspects of the PMC driver. Actually, the WinPMCTest application doesn't exist. I may have intended to write one at some point, but never did. To really test the driver, build and run the WinPAPI Shell application and exercise the test functions in the Diagnostics panel.

RESOURCES

For the latest release of the Windows NT device driver kit, see http://www.microsoft.com/ddk/.
For the latest release of the ddkbuild batch file, see http://www.hollistech.com/Resources/ddkbuild/ddkbuild.htm.
Other components mentioned above are part of the PAPI distribution.

CODE TOUR

File Manifest

Directory   File            Description

winpmc      WinPMC.html     Build documentation for this driver (this file).
            WinPMC.dsp,dsw  Project and Workspace files for MS Visual C.
            pmclib.c        Source file for Driver interface library.
            pmclib.h        Header file for Driver interface library.
            instpmc.bat     batch file to install and run the driver.
            bldpmc.bat      batch file to build and run the driver.
            ntaddsvc.exe    driver installer called by instpmc.bat.
            dirs            Tells the build environment where to find Sources.
            Sources         Generic file list for building the driver.
            Makefile        Used by the build environment. DON'T TOUCH.
            pmc_x86.c       Source file for PMC specific functionality.
            pmc_x86.h       Source file for PMC specific functionality.
            WinPMC.c        Source file for Windows Driver generic functionality.
            WinPMC.h        Include file for Windows Driver generic functionality.

Top of page