Enabling Support for Debugging Device Installations
Starting with Windows Vista, when the Plug and Play (PnP) manager detects a new device in the system, the operating system starts the device installation host process (DrvInst.exe) to search for and install a driver for the device.
To set the type of support the operating system provides for debugging the device installation host process, create (or modify) the following REG_DWORD registry value on the target system to be debugged:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Device Installer\DebugInstall
The following table describes the types of debugging support that is specified by using the DebugInstall registry value.
| DebugInstall value | Debugging support |
|---|---|
2 |
The device installation process will be debugged by using a user-mode debugger. For more information, see Debugging Device Installations with a User-mode Debugger. |
1 |
The device installation process will be debugged by using the kernel debugger (KD). For more information, see Debugging Device Installations with the Kernel Debugger (KD). |
0 |
No debugging of the device installation process. This is the default support if DebugInstall is not present in the registry |
After the DebugInstall registry value is set you do not need to reboot the target system that you want to debug. However, DebugInstall registry value must be set before the start of the next device installation and remains in effect for each subsequent device installation until the value is set to zero.
Note Be sure to reset the DebugInstall registry value to zero (or delete the value) as soon as it is no longer necessary to debug a device installation on the target system.