Definition of Automatic Skip Driver Agent (ASD) in Network Encyclopedia.

What is ASD (Automatic Skip Driver Agent)?

ASD stands for Automatic Skip Driver Agent, is a Microsoft Windows 98 built-in utility that allows you to bypass troublesome devices so that Windows 98 can successfully boot.

How it works

The Automatic Skip Driver Agent (ASD) identifies device failures that caused Windows 98 to stop responding on previous attempts to boot the system and marks these devices so that the boot process skips them on subsequent boot attempts. Once you have finished troubleshooting a device problem, you can use ASD to enable the device to see whether the device has begun to function properly. If the device fails again, ASD will again disable it. Disabled devices can be viewed and reenabled by running ASD again from the command line with the command asd.exe or from the System Information utility in the System Tools program group. Device Manager shows disabled devices with a yellow exclamation point.

During startup, Windows 98 tries to load device drivers for installed hardware. ASD keeps track of device driver failures by identifying which devices cannot be enumerated during startup. If attempts to load the device driver for a device fail two times, ASD disables the device so that Windows 98 can start properly.