I'm debugging an audio driver under Windows 7. When I need to replace it with an updated version, I have to reboot the system because a copy of current driver under DriverStore is locked despite the fact that the driver is unloaded. Is there a way to avoid rebooting? It was possible on XP...
A:
Do you tried to stop driver with devcon.exe utility (an old version can be downloaded also in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272, a new version you find under C:\WinDDK\7600.16385.1\tools\devcon\i386 after intalling of WDK)? Do you examine which processed use your driver (for example with respect of Process Explorer http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx)? If you describes your problem more exactly I could try to help you.
Oleg
2010-07-12 22:16:51
Oleg, I'm sorry, I'm no longer working on that driver. I guess I should have closed the question when I moved on to work on other things. As far as I remember, the driver was really unloaded and not used by anything; there was no active device so `devcon` couldn't be used. The problem was that even if I replaced the driver in `%WINDIR%\system32\drivers`, then, when I made it load, Windows restored the old copy (presumably from DriverStore).
atzz
2010-07-13 04:59:51