Articles
| Making your first Windows driver - complete walkthrough | This is a complete walkthrough on creating and debugging your first Windows driver using VisualDDK. It describes the entire process: from installing the required tools to stepping through your driver code in Visual Studio. | |
| VMWare internals - GuestRPC | The GuestRPC mechanism provides an efficient way of exchanging messages between a VMWare host and a guest machine. GuestRPC relies on VMWare backdoor technology (an emulated hardware port for sending requests from guest machine) and allows executing arbitrary handlers inside the VMWARE-VMX.EXE process from the guest machine. This mechanism is used to transfer kernel debugging data in a faster way than a simulated COM port. The article describes how to use the GuestRPC mechanism using the KDVMWare implementation as an example. | |
| KD extension DLLs & KDCOM protocol | All Windows versions from NT4 to Windows Vista support debugging via a COM port. In that mode a part of the operating system sends and receives data via the COM port using a special protocol called KDCOM. Understanding this protocol was one of the key points in KDVMWare project, as it allowed creating/parsing KDCOM packets on the host side, passing structured packet data directly to the guest OS. The article describes the KDCOM protocol in detail. |
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