How to Configure Visual Studio 2008 for Compiling Drivers

Introduction 

As it is known, Microsoft officially doesn't support integration of DDK with Visual Studio (any version). So we can use the Visual Studio editor (or any other text editor) for developing the source codes of a driver, but for compiling we should use the DDK build utility. Of course it is not very convenient because we must always switch between editor and console window, but the worst thing is that the developer must spend a lot of time to find lines with errors in the editor.

Background 

There are several ways to compile drivers with Visual Studio. You can find most of them in the nice Mark Roddy article, Windows Driver Build Methods and Tools.

Mark offers some third party utilities. That's good, but I will show a more handy way (IMHO): how to configure and use Visual Studio for compiling drivers. 

Have Fun

1. Setup Visual Studio 2008.

2. Setup DDK (WDK).

3. Add to VS paths DDK include files, libs and bins.

4. Create new empty "Win32 project" and add source file (i.e. HelloWorld.c).

5. Configure project properties (All Configurations):

   1. C\C++ - General - Debug Information Format = Program Database (/Zi)
   2. C\C++ - Preprocessor - Preprocessor Definitions = _X86_ [add also DBG for Debug config]
   3. C\C++ - Code Generation - Enable C++ Exceptions = No
   4. C\C++ - Code Generation - Basic Runtime Checks = Default
   5. C\C++ - Code Generation - Buffer Security Check = No (/GS-)
   6. C\C++ - Advanced - Calling Convention = __stdcall (/Gz)
   7. C\C++ - Advanced - Compile As = Compile as C Code (/TC) [if you are going to use plain C]
   8. Linker - General - Output File = $(OutDir)\$(ProjectName).sys
   9. Linker - General - Enable Incremental Linking = Default
   10. Linker - Input - Additional Dependencies = ntoskrnl.lib hal.lib $(NOINHERIT) [add needed libs here e.g. ntoskrnl.lib hal.lib]
   11. Linker - Input - Ignore All Default Libraries = Yes (/NODEFAULTLIB)
   12. Linker - Manifest File - Generate Manifest = No
   13. Linker - System - SubSystem = Native (/SUBSYSTEM:NATIVE)
   14. Linker - System - Driver = Driver (/DRIVER)
   15. Linker - Advanced - Entry Point = DriverEntry
   16. Linker - Advanced - Base Address = 0x10000
   17. Linker - Advanced - Randomized Base Address = Disable (/DYNAMICBASE:NO)
   18. Linker - Advanced - Data Execution Prevention (DEP) = Disable (/NXCOMPAT:NO)

6. OK. Done. Now you can test it with simple code, e.g.:

   #include "ntddk.h"
   
   NTSTATUS
   DriverEntry(PDRIVER_OBJECT DriverObject,PUNICODE_STRING
   RegistryPath)
   {
   return STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL;
   }

Points of Interest 

Visual Studio + DDK - it's cool! :) 

History 

• 18^th December, 2008: First post 

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)