Microsoft Windows: Atomic ops and memory barriers

Introduction This post examines what the Microsoft’s compiler does in response to a variety of special functions that implement atomic operations and memory barriers. If you program like a civilized human being, that is with spinlocks and mutexes, this is a lot of things you should never need to care about. I’ve written a similar [...]

Attestation signing of Windows device driver: An unofficial guide

Introduction This is my best effort to summarize the steps to attestation signing for Windows drivers (see Microsoft’s main page on this). I’m mostly a Linux guy with no connections inside Microsoft, so everything written below is based upon public sources, trial and (a lot of) error, some reverse engineering, and speculations. This couldn’t be [...]

Crypto jots on ASN.1 and Microsoft’s .cat files

Intro Crypto is not my expertise. This is a pile of jots I wrote down as I tried to figure out what the Microsoft catalogue file is all about. Not-so-surprising spoiler: It appears to be organized and elegant at first glance, but the more you look into it, it’s a mess. Of the kind that’s [...]

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This post has been terminally removed. It’s pointless to ask me for a copy of it.

This post is intentionally left blank

This post has been terminally removed. It’s pointless to ask me for a copy of it.

VIA VL805 USB 3.0 PCIe adapter: Forget about Linux (?)

TL;DR Bought an Orico PCIe adapter for USB 3.0 for testing a USB device I’m developing (PVU3-5O2I). It has the VL805 chipset (1106/3483) which isn’t xHCI compliant. So it works only with the vendor’s own drivers for Windows, which you’ll have to struggle a bit to install. Update: Be sure to read the comments at [...]

Windows device drivers: Notes to self

Yet another messy post with just things I wrote down while developing a device driver for Windows. Not necessary coherent, not necessarily accurate. General notes while playing around To start Windows 10 allowing installation of unsigned drivers, hold Shift while selecting “Restart” in the Power menu. Windows will appear to restart normally, but enters a [...]

A dissection of WDK’s PCIDRV sample driver’s IRP juggling

Scope The WDK arrives with sample code for a PCI driver, known as PCIDRV. It demonstrates the recommended old-school methods for avoiding mishaps when maintaining your own IRP queue. Frankly speaking, I’ve written this post as I learned the different corners of IRP juggling, so pretty much like certain operating systems, it’s a bit of [...]

Windows device driver loading logs

The log level is set in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\LogLevel. The key may need to be created (DWORD). The default on my computer turned out to be 0x2000ff00, which means maximal logging is achieved. The set bit 29 tells the logger not to flush data into the file after each entry (faster logging, but data [...]

Bug check on IoConnectInterruptEx()

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you’ve experienced a bug check (blue screen of death, BSOD, if you like) as a result of calling IoConnectInterruptEx(). It’s also likely that you used this function to support MSI (Message Signaling Interrupt). You may have attempted to follow the horribly misleading example given by Microsoft itself. The [...]