A little over a year ago, MVP Martin O'Brien advised us that that the single most important improvement we could make to the WDK docs would be to fill in the missing "Requirements" information on the reference pages in the Kernel-Mode Driver Architecture section. We didn't get to this task immediately because we first had to update the WDK docs for Windows 7. Now that Windows 7 is out the door, work on improving the requirements information is well under way.

If you're not familiar with the requirements information, see, for example, the ObReferenceObjectWithTag reference page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee220506.aspx. The Requirements section at the bottom of the page contains the following information:

·         The versions of Windows that support the ObReferenceObjectWithTag routine.

·         The IRQL at which the driver should call the routine.

·         The header file to include in code that calls the routine.

·         The library file that contains the entry point for the routine.

Our readers can use this information to quickly eliminate a number of obvious problems that might otherwise prevent their driver code from successfully compiling, linking, and running.

If you browse the other reference pages in the Kernel-Mode Driver Architecture Reference on MSDN, you will find that the Requirements sections on many of these pages are currently missing one or more items. We plan to fill in most of this missing information in the next few weeks. If you want to see a preview of these changes, you can download the recently updated WDK docs from http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/WDK/WDKdocs.mspx.