I have a two part question. Firstly, does anyone know how to get the Hardware program working which is required to get Microsoft to sign my drivers?
I already have an EV cert and correctly uploaded that to the Partner Center and then filled out all of the legal info and got my self and my company fully authorized. I have also verified my email and domain.
But when I go to the Home directory inside Microsoft Partner Center all I see is "My Access" and nothing else. Also yes I am signed into my Global Admin account. Although interestingly when I go to User management -> Microsoft Entra Applications or Groups it says "Not authorized" which does not really make any sense considering I made the account unless it is Microsoft who is restricting my access?
Anyways when I then navigate to Programs and click on "Hardware" it says I am already active in that program which is odd considering it does not pop up in my home directory. Because of this I tried manually navigating by using this link Sign in to your account but when I arrive I see an error saying "Access restricted", "We're sorry, you don't have permission to access this page because your Partner Center account has been deactivated".
So what exactly is the issue here because I have never manually deactivated my account and I recently finished completing every step for verification. Every location says I am verified and have already been in contact with support but they seem to be AI that just email me back with generic fixes thats not specific to my case. Does anyone know how to fix this?
My second question is assuming this issue eventually gets resolved or while waiting on it getting resolved what is the requirement for drivers being safe? By this I mean is there any sort of tests Microsoft will run and if so is there software I can run my self to ensure they will pass? Is there also documentation on what its checking for?
This link shows that many others are having the same trouble.
I really am not sure if anyone has made any progress on this. It would be nice to know that Microsoft has noticed a problem so they could, at the very least, clarify the situation.
Yes there is a whole testing framework and standard test sets called the 'HLK' (hardware lab kit). The docs are here:
Windows Hardware Lab Kit | Microsoft Learn
The easiest way to get started is download the hyper-v vm VHLK and use that.
We're also struggling with the same thing. The hardware program is so complicated that I doubt anyone actually knows the full requirements. Here's a checklist of things we had to go through:
- Do you have a verified business profile in Legal info - Partner?
- Do you have a verified business profile in Legal info - Developer?
- Did you sign your hardware questionnaire (sent via email)?
- Do you have an active MAICPP (partner global) agreement and hardware agreement?
Good luck.
@alxpaca Well after completing those first 2 steps it said I was already signed up for the Hardware program so I never actually got an email.
@rob18767 Yea I had issues where my account was stuck on verifying legal info for 10 months till the bug was randomly resolved but now I am stuck on this new issue...
I have read your earlier posts from almost a year ago. I have received exactly the same errors that you have received. Then there were so many bugs and support was so bad, and I decided to bail out completely and closed all the accounts.
Same as you, I had a message about primary contact not matching, but the button to update information was missing. I'm very curious to know how did you manage to get fully verified from that point?
As to deactivation, I have seen a few reports on the Internet where people had an account long before this verification non-sense, then their account got deactivated and they had to undergo the modern verification. This is very puzzling that you get this. Perhaps another bug.
The HLK tests are not mandatory as of now. You can use attestation signing without tests. That's what I was going to do.
@DriverDeveloper To be honest I am not really sure what fixed it. It was bugged for so long but I know about a month ago I randomly logged back in and the "Fix Now" button was there. I then made a support request and because the button was there they actually tried to help me. I then changed the email to have a prefix that started with my name instead of using a generic prefix like "contact" or something like that. From there it was smooth sailing (until this most recent issue). Also at some point I created a new account in order to try but that one failed but is the one that ended up working months later. None of it really makes any sense but it seems like they are too lazy to fix anything.
@DriverDeveloper Can you explain more about attestation signing?