what is NTport Library driver? can I uninstall it

now I have obviously looked this up on google and can't really find a suitable explanation why my computer would have this. I went to zealsoft website to look at description and dont really understand it about using ports without having to use kernal ms driver..? no clue what that means.

this was recently installed as of July 2018 so it was only 3 months ago and I definitely did not install this, if this was from years ago i'd probably just leave it. weird part is zealsoft website seems real old and NTPORT library driver seems to be for win7 and before, OS like xp/2000/2003 etc and obviously it would seem weird that its on windows 10.

also a guess that maybe some 3rd party software i installed came with this installed? can i remove it? anybody know what this is and what it does, pls help.

This driver is not part of Windows and is not used by normal software. The fact that it is there makes it likely that it was installed by some third party software., probably old. If you are using this software then the driver is needed. Unfortunately determining what software installed it can be difficult.

What the driver does:
Back in the days of 16 bit Windows some 25+ years ago it was common for applications to directly access hardware. There were some potential problems with this but there really was no alternative. This is at a time when most computers had 1 or 2 MB of RAM and the OS has to make do with limited resources. The ability to directly access hardware was carried through to Windows 95, 98 and ME which were designed for compatibility with these applications. The problems was if 2 or more applications tried to access the hardware at the same time. The result was often an OS crash.

Withe introduction of Windows NT in 1993 all that changed. In the interests of stability direct access to hardware was prohibited and enforced by the OS. Any application attempting this would fail but the OS and other applications would continue to run. This broke compatibility with many older applications. Applications wanting to use hardware resources, such as a USB port, had to use a driver specifically designed for this purpose. The OS includes many such drivers. But more typically applications use higher level OS software that uses the drivers.

The driver in question was designed to essentially allow direct access to hardware. Applications attempting this are indirectly going through the driver without their knowledge. The details are complex and I don't understand it all.

I wouldn't want such a driver running if it wasn't needed. If you do use such software then you have to make a choice.

LMiller7 said:

This driver is not part of Windows and is not used by normal software. The fact that it is there makes it likely that it was installed by some third party software., probably old. If you are using this software then the driver is needed. Unfortunately determining what software installed it can be difficult.

What the driver does:
Back in the days of 16 bit Windows some 25+ years ago it was common for applications to directly access hardware. There were some potential problems with this but there really was no alternative. This is at a time when most computers had 1 or 2 MB of RAM and the OS has to make do with limited resources. The ability to directly access hardware was carried through to Windows 95, 98 and ME which were designed for compatibility with these applications. The problems was if 2 or more applications tried to access the hardware at the same time. The result was often an OS crash.

Withe introduction of Windows NT in 1993 all that changed. In the interests of stability direct access to hardware was prohibited and enforced by the OS. Any application attempting this would fail but the OS and other applications would continue to run. This broke compatibility with many older applications. Applications wanting to use hardware resources, such as a USB port, had to use a driver specifically designed for this purpose. The OS includes many such drivers. But more typically applications use higher level OS software that uses the drivers.

The driver in question was designed to essentially allow direct access to hardware. Applications attempting this are indirectly going through the driver without their knowledge. The details are complex and I don't understand it all.

I wouldn't want such a driver running if it wasn't needed. If you do use such software then you have to make a choice.

thats good explaination. only thing i could think of is maybe the old computer game thief gold, or dos box which i never really pay attention to NTPORT at all. dosbox might not be the cause of it cause it should be made for current OS to run older programs. guess i just have to remove it and find out which software gives issue to.