Safe mode is that chosen state of the Windows OS in which it is expected to run incase you face any problems while running in normal mode. The Windows OS is selective in starting the drivers in safe mode. Except for the boot time drivers, it chooses not to start any driver when a user chooses to boot the OS in safe mode. But what if you have a boot time driver? How do you prevent your driver from being loaded?
Actually it is pretty simple to detect in your driver whether the system is being booted in safe mode. The kernel exports a variable of type PULONG called InitSafeBootMode. Just declare the variable as extern PULONG InitSafeBootMode. In your driver, you can check the value of this variable. If it is 0, it means that the system has NOT been booted in safe mode. Value greater than 0 indicates that the system is booting in safe mode. There are three types of safe mode boot: Minimal (SAFEMODE_MINIMAL), Network (SAFEMODE_NETWORK) and DS Repair (SAFEMODE_DSREPAIR).
It is always a good practice to check this value in your driver and take a decision whether you are prepared to run in safe mode or not.
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Good to see such small posts.. easy to read and have something to learn.. :) These little things make big difference
ReplyDeleteyeah I agree with rohit.
ReplyDeleteThis was consice, informative and you wont get it with easy googling.