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Asked: 2026-06-14T08:14:04+00:00

In Linux we can read/write from an associated driver file object and those function

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In Linux we can read/write from an associated driver file object and those function calls would be carried by the driver read/write functions. Is it the same in Windows?

Do we associate a file to the driver and access the driver functions by reading/writing to this file?

(I’ve been programming drivers under Linux and now am trying to understand “the Windows way” to do it.)

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  1. Editorial Team

    Device drivers on Windows do not work in the same way that drivers do on Linux. For a quick introduction to the overall structure of Windows drivers you can check MSDN. There are several classes of drivers but they are not tied to the VFS as in Linux, instead they are represented as nodes in a tree of devices

    From MSDN the purpose of the DriverEntry procedure is this:

    The DriverObject parameter supplies the DriverEntry routine with a pointer to the driver’s driver
    object, which is allocated by the I/O manager. The DriverEntry routine must fill in the driver
    object with entry points for the driver’s standard routines.

    This means that the I/O manager will call the procedure and you fill out the structure with pointers to the procedures that your driver implememnts. You can create individual device objects with IoCreateDevice and store them in your DRIVER_OBJECT structure.

    To create a block device style device I believe you want to create a FILE_DEVICE_DISK type device.

    There is a series of driver creation tutorials by Microsoft, the second one might be a good place to start.

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