I have a pretty strange question, that comes from a customer situation.
S’pose I have a custom device that I know can use an in-box driver. And if I just let Windows claim it, by default it’ll work fine.
But I want to do a few extra things for devices of my specific VEN/DEV whenever they’re plugged-in… like maybe create some custom Registry settings or something.
What’s the best way to do this?
Is there any way I can ship a custom INF, that specifies my VEN/DEV and includes the custom stuff I need, that refers to an in-box driver?
That’d be a pretty small driver package (having just an INF). I can’t imagine I can Attestation Sign that??
Anybody ever dealt with anything like this?
Thanks,
Peter
Hi Peter,
I recall hearing some similar request before. Let me search through some archives, maybe there was something useful there.
You can, of course, do this with Needs and Includes. Common in the USB world. I understand there’s also a new “extension INF” that adds specific capabilities without requiring a bunch of duplication. And yes, you would need to attestation sign the package. It’s still PnP, so it still needs a CAT file.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Very strange… a driver package with just an INF and a CAT. Huh!
I appreciate the assistance.
Peter
Depending on your min supported OS an extension INF is a simpler solution. It is applied as a layer on top of the in box INF.
Yes thanks. I see that now. I was pretty jazzed by the idea of Extension INFs, once Mr Roberts called them to my attention… but they’re only supported on some version of Win 10 and later. So I don’t think that will work. So I could Attestation Sign an INF with “needs” and “includes” for Win 10. How do you sign and empty driver package for Win 7 or Win 8? I mean… is there some sort of WHQL process by which I could sign this for a down-level OS? Or are we screwed by the whole cross-signing thing? Again, many thanks. This just isn’t an area where we’ve ever had to delve into before. Who knew you could have a driver package… without a driver. Peter
@“Peter_Viscarola_(OSR)” said:
Who knew you could have a driver package… without a driver.
sure, some display monitor drivers are of that type, .cat and .inf , no *.sys.
If I am not mistaken some modem drivers also of that type, and it was that way before Windows 10, so you could have it for legacy system I think
A hacky way… you can install an usermode service triggered by SERVICE_TRIGGER_TYPE_DEVICE_INTERFACE_ARRIVAL (this won’t require INFs, signing etc) and from there do whatever is needed. With obvious drawbacks.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winsvc/ns-winsvc-service_trigger
– pa