Hello Everyone,

We have driver installers for our Win8 x86 and x64 versions and wanted to know if the same driver installers could be used in the WinRT platform as well?

If not, what are the APIs to be used to develop driver installers in the WinRT platform? Does WinRT support driver installation using installers?

I came across the following link in the web. 

Limitations

Only software written using the Windows Runtime (Metro style apps) can be used on Windows RT with the exception of Microsoft Office 2013 and the desktop version of Internet Explorer 10. Developers will not be able to create applications to run on Windows RT using the Win32 APIs.^[9]

Could you help let know what are the WinRT APIs that could be used to develop driver installers in WinRT? Will the API that is used for developing driver installers for WinRT work for the x86 and x64 versions of Win8 as well? or is it that there would be separate APIs for driver installers in WinRT(ARM) and for x86, x64 versions of Win8?

Thanks, Monisha

Hi Monisha,
first of all let me say that I am not from Microsoft. I am an independent developer (MVP) that has a strong passion for WinRT and many other MS technologies.

The "Metro" platform was created only for user applications and not for administrative purposes. This means that you don't have UAC nor any kind of management such as event viewer or device management.

Every administrative application typically require an elevated token (administrator) and consequently must run in the dear old desktop. This means that you can't use WinRT to develop drivers installers.

For your info, please note that a portion of WinRT API can be used from desktop applications such as Windows Forms, WPF or MFC.

As far as I know there is still no info on what will be available for the "Windows RT" devices (the ones the come with ARM CPUs). I suspect that only OEMs will be able to install drivers on that platform (and this does make sense at all). 

Cheers,

Raf

mbarooah wrote:

Hello Raf,

Thank you for the information.

 Do you have a link to the WinRT APIs that you could share? It would be good to know the APIs that are currently supported in WinRT.

Hi Monisha,
do you mean the WinRT APIs that works in desktop mode?

Look at here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br211377.aspx

Windows Runtime These JavaScript, C#, Visual Basic, and C++ APIs provide access to all core platform features.
...
Windows Store apps only:Windows Store app APIs that are expressed as HTML or XAML elements are supported only in Windows Store apps, and are not supported in desktop apps or browsers.

I hope this helps,

Raf