WHQL & Low Resource Simulation

[QuasiCodo]

I was under the impression that in order to WHQL certify a driver you have
to pass Verifier with Low Resource Simulation turned on. However, on XP,
when I run Verifier, the ***default*** settings have Low Resource Simulation
turned OFF. Does this imply that WHQL certification does not require Low
Resource Simulation?

((&-<

 

[Mark Roddy]

I was under the impression that in order to WHQL certify a driver you have
to pass Verifier with Low Resource Simulation turned on. However, on XP,
when I run Verifier, the ***default*** settings have Low Resource Simulation
turned OFF. Does this imply that WHQL certification does not require Low
Resource Simulation?

((&-<

As far as I know, the current tests do not require low resource simulation.
--

=====================
Mark Roddy DDK MVP
Windows 2003/XP/2000 Consulting
Hollis Technology Solutions 603-321-1032
www.hollistech.com
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Tim Roberts]

I was under the impression that in order to WHQL certify a driver you have
to pass Verifier with Low Resource Simulation turned on.

No. Your device is not actually expected to operate under simulated low
resource conditions. The Low Resource Simulation is simply designed to
check whether you abort cleanly under those conditions.

Some people have responded to the low resource simulation by retrying all
of their allocations until they succeed. Allow this does allow your device
to operate under verifier's simulation, that's not the point of the test.
The point is to make sure that you test the result of ExAllocatePool, and
clean up and return a reasonable error when it fails.

 

[Bill McKenzie]

Some people have responded to the low resource simulation by retrying all

of their allocations until they succeed. Allow this does allow your device
to operate under verifier's simulation, that's not the point of the test.
The point is to make sure that you test the result of ExAllocatePool, and
clean up and return a reasonable error when it fails.

It's actually much more than that IMHO. It seems most drivers I run across
do not allocate resources in a resource variable friendly manner. That is
to say, yes you can just fail an allocation and return an appropriate
status, and have your device bang out in Device Manager or fail a request or
what have you for the given situation. But, how much better would it be, if
you architected your driver to not need to do the allocation at the fail
point. It seems that most resources can and should be allocated up front
such that run time failures are minimized. I think low resource simulation
can help point out these areas as well.