Driver Tips: What Every Driver Writer Needs to Know

Driver Tips offers succinct information about essential techniques, tools, and best practices for writing drivers for released versions of Windows, with steps to follow and links to more information.

KMDF Tips

	How to Enable the Frameworks Verifier
	How to Use the KMDF Log
	Is That Handle Still Valid?
	Troubleshooting KMDF Driver Installation
	When does EvtCleanupCallback run?
	How to View the KMDF Log for Your Driver

Memory Management Driver Tips

	Common-buffer DMA? No translation required!
	How do I keep my driver from running out of kernel-mode stack?
	Six Tips for Efficient Memory Use
	What does MmProbeAndLockPages actually lock?
	What Is Really in That MDL?
	Where did all that contiguous memory come from?
	Who's Using the Pool?

I/O Request Driver Tips

	Getting your driver to handle more than one I/O request at a time
	I/O cancellation: when does it matter?
	My device is gone. Why am I still getting IRPs?
	Queuing a work item: Once is enough!
	Too long, too short, or just right? Buffer size matters
	What does DO_DEVICE_INITIALIZING really do?

Plug and Play and Power Management Driver Tips

	Hello, user mode? Plug and Play calling
	Surprise! Your device is gone. What should your driver do?
	When WDF Drivers Can Use Power-Managed I/O Queues

Driver Design Tips

	From Sample Code to Production Driver: What to Change in the Sample
	No time to write a bus driver? Try using a device object namespace
	Writing kernel-mode drivers in C++: should you or shouldn't you?

Synchronization Driver Tips:

	One at a time! Protecting shared data from concurrent routines
	Summary of Windows Synchronization Primitives

Security and Reliability Driver Tips

	Custom Power Settings for Signed Drivers
	Help prevent buffer overruns in your driver! Use safe string functions
	How safe is your device namespace?
	How to Release-Sign File System Drivers
	IOCTLs with FILE_ANY_ACCESS: safe or sorry?
	Of course it's a valid handle! (Or is it?)

Building, Testing, and Debugging Tips

	Calling a DLL in a Kernel-Mode Driver
	Debugging Windows Vista
	Driver won't load on Windows 2000? VER_SET_CONDITION may be the culprit
	How do I keep the debugger from looking for symbols I don't need?
	How much time is your driver spending in its DPCs and ISRs?
	How to Use Function typedefs in C++ Driver Code to Improve PREfast Results
	Installing Test Builds of Inbox Drivers on Windows Vista
	Testing for Errors in Accessing and Allocating Memory
	Track down hard-to-find bugs in driver source code with PREfast

Resources

	WDK Documentation Download
	Driver Developer Community Resources
	Driver Signing Requirements for Windows
	Driver Tips: Best Practices for Windows Device Drivers
	Notes from Windows Development Teams
	Support for Developer Kits and Tools
	Driver Developer Blogs
	WDK Online

See also: 
Notes from Windows Development Teams

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