Windows® 2000 Device Driver Book: A Guide for Programmers, Second Edition, The

Writing a DriverEntry Routine

Every Windows 2000 kernel-mode or WDM driver, regardless of its purpose, has to expose a routine whose name is DriverEntry. This routine initializes various driver data structures and prepares the environment for all the other driver components.

Execution Context

The I/O Manager calls a DriverEntry routine once it loads the driver. As Table 6.1 shows, the DriverEntry routine runs at PASSIVE_LEVEL IRQL, which means it has access to page system resources.

The DriverEntry routine receives a pointer to its own driver object, which it must initialize. It also receives a UNICODE_STRING containing the path to the driver's service key in the Registry. WDM drivers have little use for this registry name. Kernel-mode drivers ...