How can I set up Visual Studio 2017 to develop drivers?

Question

According to this forum, https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware-winpc/windows-wdk-on-visual-studio-2017-community/fdbd2b44-e57a-4849-903d-04001205a764 Windows Driver Kit is not currently supported by visual studio 2017.

I tried installing the Windows Driver Kit, but the test driver projects, such as this one, fail to build

https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/master/serial/VirtualSerial

I get this error when building: Error MSB8020 The build tools for WindowsUserModeDriver10.0 (Platform Toolset = 'WindowsUserModeDriver10.0') cannot be found. To build using the WindowsUserModeDriver10.0 build tools, please install WindowsUserModeDriver10.0 build tools. Alternatively, you may upgrade to the current Visual Studio tools by selecting the Project menu or right-click the solution, and then selecting "Retarget solution".

I already tried retargeting the Solution to the two options I have: 10.0.17134.0 and 8.1, but the same error keeps coming up.

What do I need to do to build this sample driver? Do I need to install VS2015? VS2017 community edition? Why isn't this WDK supported by the Visual Studio 2017 professional version?

Thanks,

Answer 1

Visual Studio 2017 definitely supports kernel-mode device driver development; there's no doubt about that because I've been using VS17 for it for many, many months.

Use the latest version of Windows Driver Kit (WDK) which can be downloaded and installed from MSDN: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/download-the-wdk

Furthermore, you can always use the Enterprise WDK and then you can simply build using that if you wanted to from command-line. (Also can be found on page linked-to above)

Answer 2

Download the correct WDK installer for your edition of Visual Studio 2017:

• WDK for Windows 10, version 1809 for Visual Studio Community 2017

• WDK for Windows 10, version 1803 for Visual Studio Professional 2017

• WDK for Windows 10, version 1709 for Visual Studio Enterprise 2017

Visit https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/other-wdk-downloads for more information.