Edit

Share via

Making an ISR Active or Inactive

  • Article

Starting with Windows 8, a driver can call the IoReportInterruptActive or IoReportInterruptInactive routine to make a registered interrupt service routine (ISR) active or inactive.

To register an ISR, and to connect the ISR to an interrupt or a set of interrupts, the driver calls the IoConnectInterruptEx routine. After the ISR is registered, the driver can use IoReportInterruptActive and IoReportInterruptInactive to perform lightweight (or "soft") connect and disconnect operations that leave the ISR's registration unchanged. IoReportInterruptInactive disables calls to the ISR by soft-disconnecting the associated interrupt or interrupts. IoReportInterruptActive soft-connects these interrupts to enable calls to the ISR.

For example, a driver might call IoReportInterruptInactive to soft-disconnect a set of interrupts before a device exits the D0 power state, and call IoReportInterruptActive to soft-connect these interrupts after the device reenters D0. In principle, a driver might instead call IoDisconnectInterruptEx before the device exits D0, and call IoConnectInterruptEx after the device reenters D0. However, IoReportInterruptXxx calls are faster than IoConnectInterruptEx and IoDisconnectInterruptEx calls. In contrast to IoConnectInterruptEx and IoDisconnectInterruptEx calls, which might fail for a variety of reasons (for example, insufficient system resources), IoReportInterruptXxx calls rarely, if ever, fail. Additionally, the IoReportInterruptXxx routines can be called at IRQL <= DISPATCH_LEVEL, whereas IoConnectInterruptEx and IoDisconnectInterruptEx can be called only at PASSIVE_LEVEL.

By default, the ISR is active (and calls to the ISR are enabled) after IoConnectInterruptEx successfully registers the ISR.

Calls to IoReportInterruptInactive and IoReportInterruptActive are optional. If a driver never calls these routines, the registered ISR stays active until the driver calls the IoDisconnectInterruptEx routine to unregister the ISR.

The driver should configure the device to issue interrupts only when the ISR for these interrupts is active. Failure to prevent a device from issuing interrupts when the ISR is inactive might cause system instability. For example, if a device shares a level-triggered interrupt line with other devices, and the device issues interrupt requests when the ISR is inactive, the ISRs for the other devices on the line will not acknowledge the interrupt and the interrupt will continue to fire. Before calling IoReportInterruptInactive, the driver should configure the device to stop issuing interrupts. After calling IoReportInterruptActive, the driver should configure the device to start issuing interrupts.

To unregister an ISR, a driver can call IoDisconnectInterruptEx regardless of whether the ISR is currently active or inactive.

An IoReportInterruptActive call that occurs when the ISR is already active has no effect, but is not treated as an error. Similarly, an IoReportInterruptInactive call that occurs when the ISR is already inactive has no effect, but is not treated as an error.