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July 29, 2006

New Tech Tip: Converting Win32 Kernel-mode Print Drivers to User Mode

I've been doing print drivers on and off for a long time - back from the NT 3.51 days - but recently had to do my first conversion of a driver from kernel mode to user mode.

Most of the actual graphical parts of the driver are more or less unchanged, but the housekeeping and support functions differ enough to make this a challenge the first time. A few of the really trivial changes were not obvious, and I burned days and days trying to track them down.

Microsoft's documentation on this is really thin, and I looked all over the internet without success for some comprehensive guidance, so I decided to write a Tech Tip on the subject.

I started taking notes almost immediately, keeping track of big or little issues as I found them, and ended up with something that covers the major points pretty well. It doesn't replace understanding how print drivers work, of course, but for somebody thrown into the deep end of the pool with a "Convert this driver" directive, it should save a lot of time.

Unixwiz.net Tech Tip: Converting Win32 Kernel-mode Print Drivers to User Mode

Posted by steve at July 29, 2006 10:37 PM

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