Abstract: A method and a virtual device driver for monitoring the creation and destruction of child processes or threads within an application executing in a computer system controlled by an operating system, such as Windows. A list is provided for storing existing child process database structures corresponding to child processes existing within the executing application. The list is checked periodically. If, when checked, the list has no entries, it is safe to assume that the existing child process and, possibly, related grandchild processes, have exited and execution of the application is complete. Other applications in a series of applications, for example, during the installation of a software program, may then be executed with minimal risk of corruption due to concurrent execution of the applications in the series.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are disclosed for inputting new device driver information into a Personal Computer (PC) in an existing computer network so as to enable the Operating System (OS) to recognize the new hardware device during installation of the OS and to permit the OS to automatically install the associated device driver.