About Tools for Verifying and Testing Drivers

Thorough testing during all phases of development is essential to create robust, high-quality drivers for the Windows family of operating systems. Microsoft offers tools that can help developers and testers find bugs and tune driver performance during all phases of development.

Ensure Quality Drivers for Windows 8

Driver Testing for Windows Developer Preview
The WDK for Windows Developer Preview provides a sophisticated driver test framework and a set of device fundamental tests that you can use to automatically build, deploy, and test and verify your driver on remote test systems. It also contains the tools to make testing and debugging drivers more convenient and effective than before.

Code Analysis Tools for Windows Developer Preview

The WDK for Windows Developer Preview is integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Ultimate Developer Preview. The code analysis and verification tools can now be easily configured and launched from the Visual Studio development environment so that you can find and fix problems in your driver source early in the development cycle. [tjv3]

Ensure Quality Drivers for Windows

To get started with Microsoft testing tools:

Install the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) and then review the Driver Development Tools documentation.
Use PREfast to find errors in functions that the compiler might miss.
Use Static Driver Verifier to test code paths for violations of Windows Driver Model usage rules.
Implement software event tracing in your driver to use for troubleshooting in the field.
Install the latest version of Debugging Tools for Windows and keep up to date with symbols.
Turn on Driver Verifier, and use it throughout the driver development cycle.