How to write a hardware driver emulator?

[Chris:]

Hi!
I would like to get some ideas how to achieve his task in vb .net:

I have some sort of hardware and the appropriate software for it with the driver too.
I have to write an app to communicate with the original app.

The problem is does the original app can be started only when the hardware is connected too.
It is not possible to have full time access to the hardware, so I'm really limited with developing time.

I go an idea, would that be possible to write some sort of fake driver what I would load in the main time when
the hardware is not accessible to me?

I'm sure that is possible but I have no clue where to start.

Any advice would be nice.
Thank you.

 

[Herman]

I don't think you can achieve it in VB.NET easily. To write a driver in Windows you need the Windows Driver Kit, and you need to write it in C++, using COM interfaces all over.

However if the software is free, or if you have a valid license for it (just proof of it, I don't need the actual license), I may be able to help you out. I would need to have a copy of the software in question though so I can take a look. There's a good chance you can bypass the driver check by patching an instruction or two (unless the driver check was intended as a DRM of sorts, in which case there is nothing to be done, hopefully), but there's no guarantee of what will happen after that. It may work, or it may just crash...