The Windows Driver Developer's Digest

Driver Developer Conference

Nov. 11-14, 2003, Redmond WA. WD-3 was there and taking copious notes There were two themes that strongly emerged at the DDC.

The first was that Microsoft is strongly committed as never before to support the device driver community with good documentation, training and the personal attention of the relevant experts.

The second major theme at the conference was LONGHORN -- the next Windows operating system.

Can you say “paradigm shift” or does the line “Gee Toto I don’t think we are in Kansas any more” bring anything to mind? Things have changed in Redmond!

Oh, Yeah: the food was great too!

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Extending The Microsoft PassThru NDIS Intermediate Driver--Part 3 Supporting Windows XP 64-Bit Edition
by Thomas Divine

Do people whisper behind your back, "he's not computing with all 64 bits, poor fellow"? If so, Thomas will show you how to prove them wrong, at least with respect to your NDIS Intermediate Drivers.

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NDIS Driver Compile Flags
by Stephan Wolf

From a simple and portable way to write Windows drivers for network interface cards, NDIS has grown to Hydra-headed monster with multiple versions, serious platform incompatibilities, and programming rules that normal mortals can't understand. One of the ways you cope with cross-platform issues is by using the many conditional compilation switches that are built-in to NDIS.H. In this article, Netzwerkmeister Wolf explains how to use them. Alles klar!

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All About Removal Relations
by Mark Roddy

The Windows PnP manager uses Device Relations queries to gather information about the PnP relationships between a given device node and other device nodes in the system. A response to a RemovalRelations query is a declaration by a device node that, if it is removed, some other device node will also be removed. Note that this sort of device node relationship is not the same as a bus driver parent device node/child device node relationship. As a consequence of correctly using Removal Relations, Query Remove operations will be applied to all device nodes related to a specific device node through a Removal Relations query, allowing each such device node to allow or deny the remove operations as appropriate.

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Letters Letters from our readers

Security Notebook

Why it's so important that you check for NULL pointers in certain IRP dispatch routines.

Little Bits

The name speaks for itself...

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