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Building Arm64 Drivers with the WDK

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Windows 10 can run on machines that are powered by Arm64 processors. However, because Windows 10 on Arm does not support emulation of x86 kernel-mode or UMDF drivers, you must recompile these drivers to Arm64 using the instructions below.

Setup

  1. Download Visual Studio 2017 or 2019. You'll need at minimum version 15.9.

  2. On the Windows start menu, type Visual Studio Installer. Then on the Workloads tab, select Desktop development with C++.
    Selecting Desktop development with C++ from Windows options on Workloads tile.

  3. On the Individual Components tab, select the following options:

    • Visual C++ compilers and libraries for Arm
    • Visual C++ compilers and libraries for Arm64
      Selecting Arm-specific components to install.

  4. Install and restart Visual Studio.

  5. Download the Windows SDK. Ensure that you have SDK version 16299 (Windows 10, version 1709) or later.

  6. Download the WDK. Ensure that you have WDK version 16299 or later.

Building an Arm64 Driver with the WDK

  1. In Visual Studio, open a driver solution. You can use your own, or one from the Windows-driver-samples repo.

  2. Select Solutions platform and select Configuration Manager.
    Selecting configuration manager from second dropdown on top toolbar.

  3. Under Active Solution Platform, select New.
    Selecting New under Active Solution Platform dropdown.

  4. From Type or Select new Platform, select Arm64. Copy settings from Win32. Select OK and Close.
    Selecting Arm64 build target from toolbar-level dropdown.

  5. Select Arm64 as the target platform and rebuild.

See Also