WinHEC 2005: Day 2

Windows Driver Quality Signature

When Longhorn makes its debut, we can wave goodbye to that annoying pop-up window informing us of a particular driver's lack of signature. This doesn't mean that they've given up on the crusade to keep their hand in the driver development pot. The new logo program and driver signature management make it easier for developers, Microsoft and the end user.

Microsoft's goal is to significantly increase the number of drivers with signatures. They plan on doing this by expanding the range of drivers for which they will hand out signatures. Currently Microsoft will not sign a driver if they don't have a logo program for it. The Driver Quality Signature program will fix this by allowing the WHQL labs to test drivers for most hardware categories they don't currently support. In addition, they will now allow developers to sign their own drivers with Authenticode from Computer Associates. However, there are some caveats with the way Authenticode and unsigned drivers will work in comparison to Microsoft signed drivers though.

In order for a user to install an Authenticode signed driver, the administrator of the system must first designate the hardware vendor as trusted. After this is done, the end user will not be met with any problems while trying to install the driver. This is useful for companies that need to write their own internal drivers for hardware, don't have a use for MS certification, and don't want to give their end users or administrators unnecessary headaches.

Under Longhorn, only administrators will be able to install unsigned drivers - period. There will be no option for users without administrator rights to install a driver that is unsigned. Most home users do run administrator accounts, so, thankfully, this shouldn't be a large issue outside of the business world. Also on the plus side, installing unsigned drivers as an admin is no different than installing a signed driver (i.e. there are no unwanted dialog boxes to get in your way).

By increasing the number of options that hardware developers have when writing Longhorn drivers, Microsoft hopes to increase the quality of drivers by making quality testing easier and more appealing. Adding the non-logo signature program and expanding the logo program to include multiple tiers that represent the level of quality testing the driver has passed should serve their purpose well. Authenticode will help add flexibility and removing unnecessary dialog boxes will please everyone. Hopefully Microsoft can pull off the implementation of these goals as well as they think they can. Making sure WHQL keeps up with demand is not the least of our worries here either. Making sure that Gold, Silver, and all signatures are worth their cost rather than just marketing gimmicks is quite important. As the requirements for various signatures are not yet finalized, we can't really comment on whether this will come through or not.