Can the windows sandbox feature be used for driver testing?

Question

Doing windows driver development for first time, I want to deploy my first driver. But I don't have a second computer.

Microsoft docs:

Typically when you test and debug a driver, the debugger and driver run on separate computers. The computer that runs the debugger is called the host computer, and the computer that runs the driver is called the target computer. The target computer is also called the test computer.

I am starting with vhidmini2 as my project base (the UMDF2 version). I want to know if the Windows Sandbox feature can be used in place of test computer? My driver will not be interacting with any hardware.

Answer 1

The Windows Sandbox is basically a virtual machine, so you can load drivers into it as long as they do not need to interact with hardware.

But there is also one extra limitation: there does not seem to exist a way to disable the drivers signature check in the Windows Sandbox, as this requires a restart which is not possible for the sandbox. Thus, your driver has be signed to be loaded and tested.

EDIT: the Sandbox supports rebooting since Windows 11 Build 2250, so it should be possible to disable the drivers signature and install custom drivers now (cannot test though, still on W10).