Debugging Drivers

The Microsoft® Windows® DDK includes the Debugging Tools for Windows package. This package contains extremely powerful user-mode and kernel-mode debuggers that can debug applications, drivers, and services running on any NT-based operating system. For more information about these tools, see Debugging Tools for NT-Based Operating Systems.

The Windows DDK no longer includes debugging tools for Windows 98 and Windows Me. If you intend to debug drivers on these systems, install the Windows XP SP1 DDK.

The Microsoft Visual Studio® debugger can be used to debug user-mode programs on all Windows operating systems. See the Visual Studio documentation for details on this debugger.

Debugging-Related Routines

There are a number of user-mode and kernel-mode routines that allow your driver to interact with a debugger. For further information, see Overview of Debugging Routines.