System and method for freeing shared resources in a computer system

摘要

The present invention relates to systems and methods for freeing shared resources that remain allocated to a particular resource allocating process after the resource allocating process has terminated. The invention is useful in a computer system where shared hardware is accessed via a shared hardware driver layer. The shared hardware driver layer interfaces with either a shared API layer or a nonshared API layer. Processes wishing to access the shared hardware access the hardware through either the shared or nonshared API layer. To release resources and destroy objects in either the shared API layer or the shared hardware driver layer, the present invention uses a helper process that cleans up after termination of the resource allocation process. The helper process first calls a cleanup function in the shared API layer to release resources and destroy objects in the shared API layer and associated hardware driver. The helper process then loads a copy of the nonshared API layer and makes a call to a similar cleanup function to release any remaining resources and destroy any remaining objects. In the alternative, the helper process loads a copy of the nonshared API layer and calls to the similar cleanup function are made by the cleanup function in the shared API layer.