Sessions at Microsoft BUILD 2011 about Device Drivers on Thursday 15th September

The Windows Driver Framework (WDF) helps developers build better drivers, more quickly and easily. This session will discuss how the WDF can improve driver reliability and will provide an overview on what’s new in the WDF in Windows 8 This session will also cover guidance for how to better realize power-savings and deploy drivers on multiple versions of Windows.

This session will present an overview on how to develop drivers in Visual Studio using the new Windows Developer Kit (WDK) add-on pack. Topics will include developing, building, packaging, signing, deploying, debugging, testing and verifying device drivers – all within Visual Studio.

The WDK Driver Verification and Test Tools enable driver developers to resolve issues sooner in the development lifecycle. This enables developers to build drivers in a more timely and predictable manner, and lower the cost of development, testing and long term support. Topics for this session will include the Static Driver Verifier, Code Analysis, Driver Verifier, Device Fundamental Tests and guidance on how to run each from the new Visual Studio WDK environment.

This session will discuss several new ways you can implement advanced debugging of apps and device drivers. The presenters in this session will also share their tips and tricks for debugging across multiple platforms.

In this session, technology experts from the Windows Graphics team will discuss how to transition from writing XDDM drivers to writing WDDM drivers. Using server and virtualization concepts, you will learn new scenarios enabled by WDDM and steps for writing a WDDM driver for XDDM hardware.

Windows 8 enables device makers to extend the built-in device experiences through differentiated Metro style device apps in several device categories. For the broad set of devices that do not fit those categories, whether using native Windows components or custom drivers, Windows also provides a mechanism for creating and delivering custom experiences. This session describes key concepts and recommendations on how to enable and build Metro style apps for such devices.

This chalk talk provides a deep-dive into the Windows driver kit for Windows 8, focusing on architecture changes from Windows 7. The talk will start with a discussion on important feature areas such as project conversion, remote debugging, and building, signing and deploying device drivers. This session will also include an interactive discussion with questions from the audience.