The Windows Driver Developer's Digest
Gotcha!

This column is dedicated to disseminating information on the various Gotchas and annoyances that crop up during Windows driver development. Where possible we'll provide a workaround, as well as identify which versions of the DDK and the operating systems exhibit these problems. Also, some Gotchas are restricted to particular driver models, such as Network, Video, Audio, etc., which will be identified. In addition to Gotchas, we'll also periodically cover some advanced techniques that do not require an entire article to describe, as well as the occasional pearl of wisdom.

We don't intend to turn this column into another rant against Microsoft (we all know that there are already too many of those!). Instead, we prefer to take a more constructive attitude, and try and save people time and aggravation – although, Brian Catlin, our Gotcha! editor, is not above a little sarcastic humor here and there J.

At first thought, you would think that coming up with a list of driver Gotchas would be fairly simple for people who have been writing Windows device drivers for more than 10 years; however, like most people, we try to avoid things that annoy us.  We’ve trained our thought processes to skip over these problems. Fortunately, our readers, not to mention the students who come to the seminars some of us conduct or post questions on the newsgroups we all monitor, run into these things all the time. That will provide us with enough material to keep this column going well into the next decade.

If you have any Gotchas that you would like to share, please send them to Gotchas@wd-3.com. We don't promise to use anything you send us -- or even to read everything you send -- but if we do use your suggestion, we’ll give you credit (if we didn’t think of it first, or if you slip Brian a sawbuck) making you instantly famous and the object of adoration by millions (well OK, maybe you’ll still just be adored only by your mother -- but you’ve got to start somewhere).