Overview of Driver Technologies

For general information about developing drivers see Getting started with Windows drivers and Write your first driver.

The majority of the driver technology information is the same for all editions of Windows 10. When you must make special considerations for a particular edition of Windows, such as for Windows 10 Mobile, we explicitly called these out in each technology area.

Windows drivers

You can create a Windows Driver—a driver that uses a subset of the available interfaces—to run on all editions of Windows 10. Where possible, use a Windows Driver to enable deployment of your drivers on multiple devices. For more information about how to build, install, deploy, and debug a Windows Driver for Windows 10, see Getting Started with Windows Drivers and Deploying a Driver to a Test Computer.

Device drivers and Windows 10 for desktop computers

For information about the tools used to develop desktop drivers, see Driver Development Tools and Tools for Verifying Drivers. For information about deploying drivers to Windows 10 on a desktop, see Device and Driver Installation. For information about troubleshooting driver installation, see Troubleshooting Configuration of Driver Deployment, Testing and Debugging.

Driver technologies