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There exists an MSDN page titled “Support and community for hardware developers”, which includes a column of links titled “Ask the community”. Each of those links will send a current or potential developer somewhere that will allow them to interact with other current or potential developers, including a bunch of us that work in hardware and driver development at Microsoft. While each of these places tends to be active and rich with content, there have been a person or two that have asked: “Why is there no link to a blog dedicated to this stuff?” There are a few reasons for this, but none are particularly exciting or worthy of discussion at the moment. So, without much further ado…

Welcome to the Windows Hardware and Driver Developer blog!  

As one might infer from the title, we're launching this blog with the intention to produce content focused on the world of Windows driver development, including hardware and software designed for the purpose. Our intention is to create another (sometimes less "formal") place where a driver developer and/or hardware enthusiast can read about happenings within the world of driver development for Windows. We will cover a variety of topics that include (and certainly not limited to):

  • Tips-and-Tricks on various aspects of development, debugging, and the available tools
  • Debugging walkthroughs: root-cause analysis on issues we found particularly interesting
  • Product availability and update announcements, overviews, etc.
  • Basically stuff that's considered interesting and relevant!

Our vision for this blog includes our readers suggesting ideas for topics that we’re able to cover. Similarly, when we observe a trend in our Windows Hardware WDK and Driver Development support forum or popular development forums, and it’s a subject where a blog post would benefit, we’ll create a post that covers it. 

We have compiled a roster of people that will contribute to this blog, most of whom are focused in some way on the Windows Driver Kit (WDK), Windows Driver Framework (WDF), or Windows compatible hardware development boards. Our group hails from many different functional backgrounds, which has already proven to be useful in terms of content variety: Program Managers, Support Engineers, Quality Engineers, Developers, and Leads (you know, management-types). The plan is for content to be added to the blog about once per week, though don’t be surprised if posts appear more often than that. In fact, it’s likely that this post won’t be the only post on this board for too long!

So, what’s coming up in the near-term? With the impending release of the Sharks Cove development board, we are working on a few posts related to it, including a series of posts from our summer intern, describing his initial journey into the world of hardware and driver development and using this board as part of his driver development. At some point in the near future, we'll also give a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at some of the work done to make the Sharks Cove a reality.

We will start cranking out posts soon, and over time we’ll look to put an end to the question (for this topic, anyway), “Why isn’t there a blog for that?”