I am about to develop drivers for windows as i have to make a project on that.
I have gone through the resources available at msdn library, but I am still not getting how can I do practice on making those.
what software I should install , is that WDK or anything else?
and after installing where should i start from?
regards
san
I would suggest you use a virtual machine to test your driver since if it fails, it will bomb your entire operating system...
And as far as I know, the Driver Kit or whatever it's called also includes a compiler used to compile your drivers?
Originally Posted by Adak
Why do I have a feeling you are not a seasoned programmer who just happened to recently register at this site? Are you up to writing a driver (not to be "Mr. Discouragement")? Maybe you should start off a bit smaller first. Though I do like your ambition. Definitely do as Elysia suggested and for sure get the Driver Development Kit... since its kind of where you will be starting.san_crazy
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 21
Recommendation: If possible use another machine for your driver development machine. It makes testing oh so much easier when you are wanting to put it in action.
as i don't have another system, is there not any way by which I can code and test the driver program in my own system without any single vulnerability?
would it be dangerous for hardwares also while running such program. can I start this writing it for any particular hardware device that is not used and any damage to it doesn't cost so much?
Did you just ignore what Elysia said that I had agreed with (which I boldified for your viewing pleasure)?
The reason I say use another system is quite simply I hate restarting my development machine. Nothing more. Usually by the time you are feeling strongly about your driver's stability you can just put it on your rig, but then you have to restart... then reopen your project... initialize your debugger and attach it to your driver... then recompile it without the bugs... then restart with the updated driver... then get upset and reinstall the driver you had to begin with...
...Yeah I have been there before. In any event, the Driver Development Kit (or whatever they call it nowadays) comes with a virtual machine. It is actually very handy even for debugging other apps besides drivers.
do you know any link where I can download the DDK from?
I have googled for that without any success.
Click here... (10 seconds into the site you may wish to put a gun to your head... but that is Microsoft for you)
For what OS? It is actually a pain in the ass to acquire, just so you know. In the future you may just go straight to msdn.microsoft.com and look. But they dev kits are platform dependant.
Last edited by master5001; 10-03-2008 at 01:45 PM.
for wondow xp sp2.
well, I found a link but I am not sure if it is exactly what I am looking for.
http://http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a55b6b43-e24f-4ea3-a93e-40c0ec4f68e5&DisplayLang=en
Last edited by san_crazy; 10-03-2008 at 01:51 PM.
I dunno... the link didn't work for me. Why Microsoft replaced the DDK's with the WDK's is beyond me. Though the WDK's make more sense from a developmental standpoint, from a navigating their site perspective the words that come out of my mouth while looking for the correct WDK are rarely anything other than explitives.
click on the link now, it works
I am not extremely clear on whether or not this even supports XP drivers... is just downloading it and finding out that way a problem? Its probably what I would do.
I could have sworn that they separated the DDK's so that the 2003 one doesn't work for XP and the Longhorn/Vista one is only for Vista... Or "Mojave" as they call it on those stupid commercials--an homage to public stupidity.
Yes!
No!
Why is this? Because in kernel mode, you have access to the very internals of Windows, and if anything goes wrong, you could do something very bad, such as corrupt the registry and making your machine unable to boot again.
Granted, simpler drivers runs less risk of doing this, but the very risk is still there.
You will have to very experienced in avoiding buffer overruns for one thing. If you get one, you are in serious trouble.
The best thing would be to have lots of experience in coding. And even then, a virtual machine for testing is pretty much a must.
thanks anyway.
ok, its not a big deal if I will have to do lots of practice to gain lots of experience cause I have enough time around 6 months.
you tell me, what are the things specifically in C which I should focus most in?
pointers?,....bit fields?.....or anything else.
I have good understanding of pointers though, but not about bit fields.
What you need most, I think, is keeping your code safe from undefined behaviors, especially buffer overruns.
I don't know much other than that, since I haven't developed drivers myself.
Although, there's nothing from stopping you to try once you got a virtual machine. You may benefit from the experience, possibly.
