Windows Driver Kit Beta 2 is finally available

  • Article

I got back from vacation today and went to
connect.microsoft.com to see
if the WDK beta was up yet, and i'm happy to say that it is. It's a fairly
large (2.3 GB) ISO image to download and i'm pulling it down now to make
sure it works okay.

Here are the steps i had to follow to get into the beta:

1.
Navigate to connect.microsoft.com
and sign in using your passport account (the passport link is at
the top right of the web page).

2.
Go to the Available Programs
page (there's a menu link on the left side of the window) and scroll
down to find the Microsoft Windows Driver Kit (WDK) Beta Program entry
then click on the Apply/ link.

3.
Decide if you agree with the terms and conditions. If you do then
click on the I Agree button at the bottom of the screen.

4.
This should bring you to the Mandatory Surveys page. The
Beta 2 Feedback survey is very, very short so you should just
take it. If you want to skip it there's a link for that too, but I'm
guessing that you'll be forced to take it by 6/15 if you want to keep
access to the beta site (based on the web page content).

5.
Either way you'll end up at the web page for the WDK beta. There's
nothing really on the page, but you can get the kit from the
Downloads link in the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.

6.
On the downloads page, choose the last item (WDK Beta 2). Downloading
this requires that you install an ActiveX control, and the download
will take a while. Once you're done you should be able to burn it
to a DVD using your favorite tool, or use the
Virtual CD-ROM tool
to mount the image.
from Microsoft.

For purposes of this discussion, we'll assume you mount the ISO image  
(either with a DVD or VirtualCD) on z:.
  1. Open Z: and run Installer.exe. This will let you install the
    prerequisites and then the build environment and doc set. Install
    whatever other parts you see fit.

You should now have a kit installed which will let you build UMDF drivers
for use on Windows Vista (beta of XP support is on the way.) I'll talk
about getting started with that later.

Enjoy.

-p

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 30, 2006
    PingBack from http://kernelmustard.com/2006/05/30/how-to-get-into-the-vista-beta/

  • Anonymous
    May 31, 2006
    they have taken it offline?

    its not in this list anymore :~

  • Anonymous
    June 11, 2006
    Idi w schopu.

  • Anonymous
    June 15, 2006
    YIPPY!!!
    Sometimes it seems like releasing software is more complicated than developing it.  We...

  • Anonymous
    June 28, 2006
    I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write about this.  The
    last week or two have been pretty...

  • Anonymous
    September 18, 2006
    It appears my Channel 9 interview is live.  I haven't actually watched it yet, so I might regret putting...

  • Anonymous
    September 26, 2006
    In Windows Vista, we have moved many drivers out of the kernel and up into user mode, which will greatly

  • Anonymous
    September 28, 2006
    After having finished with the initial resources on the windows internals, it is time for a developer...

  • Anonymous
    October 04, 2006
    After having finished with the initial resources on the windows internals, it is time for a developer

  • Anonymous
    October 08, 2006
    They've taken it out.

  • Anonymous
    April 11, 2007
    For those of you who are trying to find the WDK download link on WHDC, it is not longer there. It has