Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books
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At just over 520 pages, The Windows NT Device Driver Book is half the length and less longwinded than more recent texts. However, it is less complete than more recent books and has been criticized as inaccurate on NT DDK mail lists and (with the advent of Windows 2000 and WDM drivers) out of date. Still, some minor things are covered in this book that are not covered in the current crop of books. This includes using hardware compatibility test suites (the HCT CD-ROMs in the MSDN) as a part of stress testing drivers and using DUMPEXAM as well as WinDbg.exe to read crash dumps. --Regan Russell, Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books
The publisher, Prentice-Hall ECS Professional
The most comprehensive, authoritative guide to Windows NT driver development. Now that Windows NT is rapidly becoming the business operating system of choice, more and more programmers are faced with developing Windows NT drivers. This book explains the complex Windows driver architecture, and presents insights into a myriad of practical details that are rarely, if ever, documented. It clarifies the murky Microsoft Driver Documentation Kit (DDK) documentation, and contains extensive detail missing from the DDK. This information is essential now, and will prepare developers for the future, when Microsoft introduces the common Win32 Driver Model for Windows NT and Windows 95. Learn about the NT I/O Manager and its data structures, and discover how various hardware issues impact driver design. Learn about full-duplex driver architecture, techniques for handling time-out conditions, logging device errors, kernel-model threads, higher-level drivers, and class drivers for SCSI devices. Understand how to set up a driver development environment and analyze crash dumps. Includes extensive sample code on diskette, designed specifically to help streamline development projects. For all Windows programmers who have a role in writing device drivers.
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