Why You Shouldn’t Use the Driver Verifier in Windows 10

Windows includes a ;Driver Verifier; tool that can stress test your device drivers. It detects bad driver behavior, but any issue found triggers an immediate blue screen of death. Most PC users should stay away.

This utility has been around since Windows 2000 and XP, and it7;s still part of Windows 10 today.

Driver Verifier is Mostly For Developers

As Microsoft7;s developer documentation notes, Driver Verifier is a helpful tool for developers who are creating and testing device drivers. The tool helps developers find driver problems and fix them.

Driver Verifier can perform a variety of tests, which Microsoft lists on its site. For example, Driver Verifier can allocate most memory requests for the driver from a select pool of memory and monitor that memory for issues. Driver Verifier can cause memory requests to randomly fail to check if the driver works properly in low resource usage situations. Driver Verifier also has tests that can check for memory leaks, security vulnerabilities, and other issues.

While this is a useful tool for developers, you almost certainly don7;t want to use it yourself. This tool only stress tests the device driver software itself. It doesn7;t stress the hardware itself, so it may not find any problems even if you have a hardware component that7;s failing.

Your PC7;s Drivers Are Probably Well-Tested

On a modern Windows system, you7;re almost certainly already using drivers that have been verified and signed. Modern 64-bit versions of Windows 10 require signed drivers. These signed drivers have gone through Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) testing, and they should be pretty stable.

When you run Driver Verifier, you can ask it only to test unsigned drivers. There7;s a good chance Driver Verifier will inform you that you have no unsigned drivers on your system if you do so.

Driver Verifier Can Cause Crashes

If your computer is running fine already, there7;s no reason to run Driver Verifier2;unless you7;re developing a driver. Even if it uncovers problems, the whole point of Driver Verifier is to stress the drivers. That kind of rigorous testing almost certainly will find some issues with the driver, but those are unlikely to cause any real problems in the regular, day-to-day use of your computer.

Driver Verifier can also cause Windows to crash. If it finds a driver problem, you7;ll see a blue screen of death. Microsoft7;s documentation says you should not run this tool on your regular computer, saying ;you should only run Driver Verifier on test computers, or computers you are testing and debugging.; It7;s not meant as a tool for helping regular users test driver problems on their production systems.

If your Driver Verifier settings cause a blue screen of death every time your PC boots, you may be unable to boot normally. You can try restarting in Safe Mode and disabling Driver Verifier.