How do I start with writing Windows minifilter drivers ? [closed]

Question

I want to use windows miniFilter in my project.
I have seen the Microsoft documentation, but it seemed very hard to understand.

I have also read the GitHub examples for miniFilters, but they don't provide explanation for everything, as I want to understand what I write and not just copy and paste. Is there any beginner friendly site that can help me learn more ?

Profusive

Answer 1

There are not a lot of great resources for getting started on this - no real tutorials or anything. The best sources are the Windows driver samples. Start with a simple one like filesys\miniFilter\nullFilter and then move up to filesys\miniFilter\passThrough to get you started. OSROnline is also a really great resource. And (shameless plug here) I have written a short, 4-part blog post on writing a register filter driver that starts pretty basic.

Ban

Hello, i find your comment very useful. I'm new to writing drivers, i need to create a minifilter, but i have one fundamental problem: i cannot find a basic tutorial that tells me how to compile a driver and install it on a virtual machine so i can debug it. I have read about WinDBG, but still, the WDK i have is with visual studio 2019 (can't find older links anymore) and visual studio only supports that remote debugger of his that doesn't quite work or i don't know how to use it... – Horrendous

@Horrendous I am probably just old-school about this. I find that the best way to deploy a build to a machine and test it is to manually install it (I write some scripts so it's easy), and then use windbg to debug the target machine. I know Visual Studio WDK has some of this functionality, but I've always had better luck the old way. :) – Ban

Indeed, the best way to go is to manually install it on a VM and just attach the windbg to it – Horrendous