Continual Updates: Love Them or Hate Them? Either Way, Peter Rants It is difficult for me to convey how very much I *dislike* having both my tools and my operating system continually updated. It’s not that I don’t like new features. Heck, I’m positively a whore for new features: Whoooaaa! You can do @ mentions […]
Moving NTDEV, NTFSD and WINDBG — What’s Next
Community Members: This is the first in a short series of preparatory articles about moving OSR’s peer support forums, NTDEV, NTFSD, and WINDBG from their long-time home to a new and thoroughly modern platform. In this post, we discuss the history of the lists, our search for a new home, and the features we’ll be […]
What’s New in WDK 1803: Your Driver Has 552 Code Analysis Warnings
These days, each new upgrade for Windows brings with it a new Windows Driver Kit. And each new Windows Driver Kit brings with it new functions and features. Note that at the time of this writing (21 May 2018) the latest version of Visual Studio is 15.7.1 — and this is definitely the version you […]
Visual Studio 2017 Support for Spectre Mitigation
Just a quick note to make you aware that the version of Visual Studio 2017 that includes support for the /Qspectre switch, and the “__declspec(spectre(nomitigation))” decoration that can be used to exempt performance critical code segments from fence insertion, is now available for download. The version is VS 2017 V15.5.5… Check it out here: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/releasenotes/vs2017-relnotes
Guidance for Installing and Using WDK 1709 (aka 16299 aka RS3)
The newest WDK works with Visual Studio 2017! Let’s celebrate. But, it seems nothing is totally straight-forward anymore. Now that the new WDK is available, we thought we’d pass along a few hints/pointers to help you navigate the upgrade. In no particular order, here are our top hints for installing and using the newest WDK […]
Community Speaks Loudly and Clearly: We Want a Driver Conference!
There’s no point in keeping the polling open forever. We released the most recent issue of The NT Insider a week ago. In that issue, we asked the Windows Driver Development Community: Should Microsoft hold a conference for driver developers, and if so where would be the best location to hold it? The response was […]
Universal INFs: No ClassInstall32 Section?
I wrote an article in the last issue of The NT Insider that described the whole “thing” about the Universal Driver model, and how it was more than just writing a driver that uses a (very common) subset of Driver Development Interfaces (DDIs). The bottom line is that writing a truly Universal Driver now necessarily […]
Hey Microsoft! We Want a Driver Developer Conference!
Update 11 November 2017: Voting is closed. The results are in! I like Shenzhen. Really, I do. It’s an exciting, vital, and fast-growing city. The food is phenomenal. But as much fun as Shenzhen is, it’s not exactly “next door” for most of the Windows Driver Development Community. If you’re in Western Europe, it’s more […]
Attestation Signing — It’s NOT a Mystery
All of a sudden, you can’t load your driver on 64-bit Windows. It works sometimes. But it won’t install or load when Secure Boot is enabled. You heard something about needing an EV Certificate… you got one… it doesn’t help. What do you do now? Over the past few weeks, we’ve been contacted by several […]
WDK Problem Fixed, Plus Preview Access For All
[Last updated 24 October 2016, 11:00 Eastern time — Fix broken link] I wanted to update you on the status of a few issues in the world of the Windows Driver Kit, and also let you know about new options for early access to new versions of the WDK. Side-By-Side: Working Again You may recall that RS1, […]
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