What is wdm drivers

Device Objects and Device Stacks describes device objects and device stacks. Drivers are often built from a set of device objects that work together. This set of device objects is called a stack. Stacks can help you understand the flow of information to and from a driver and how different parts of the driver communicate internally.

Kernel-Mode Driver Components describes which routines you must implement to have a functional driver and which routines are optional. A device driver is a set of software code that must integrate into the operating system. To complete this integration, you must write a set of handler routines in your driver that process calls from the operating system.

Under Linux, a block device can be accessed like a character device, as in Unix, but also has a block-oriented interface that is invisible to the user or application. Traditionally, under Unix, device drivers are linked with the kernel, and the system is brought down and restarted after installing a new driver. Linux introduces the concept of a dynamically loadable driver called a module. Linux modules can be loaded or removed dynamically without requiring the system to be shut down.

A Linux driver can be written so that it is statically linked or written in a modular form that allows it to be dynamically loaded. This makes Linux memory usage very efficient because modules can be written to probe for their own hardware and unload themselves if they cannot find the hardware they are looking for.

Classification of Drivers According to Operating Systems. WDM Drivers. WDF Drivers. Please read the documentation for device type-specific Microsoft-supplied drivers to determine how new drivers must interface with Microsoft-supplied drivers.

For more device type-specific information, see Device and Driver Technologies. Feedback will be sent to Microsoft: By pressing the submit button, your feedback will be used to improve Microsoft products and services.

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