Unable to Access Windows Hardware Developer Center
Dear Microsoft Tech Community, I am reaching out for help figuring out how to access the Windows Hardware Developer Center in 2026. I have been trying to reach out for help from Microsoft through every available channel and have not made any progress towards resolution over the last 3 months (starting October 2025). We have a new hardware device (PCIe card) for which we need to submit drivers for Microsoft certification. We have been enrolled in the program and have successfully submitted drivers and had them approved and signed by Microsoft in the past (most recently in March, 2022). As far as I can tell, the previous entry point or portal for submitting hardware drivers was removed and/or integrated into the Microsoft Partner Center. However, we currently cannot see or access anything related to the Hardware Developer Center within the Partner Center UI. In the Partner Center, we are shown as a "Verified" developer (under Legal Info). If I try to go through the process to enroll in the "Hardware Program", the screen shows that we are already in the program with a message "Our records indicate that you have already enrolled into this program but your program registration is deactivated." Attempts to get support from Microsoft have resulted in deferral to an appeal process for being out of compliance, but at no point have we been out of compliance or ever received a violation ID or any indication that we were not in compliance (or we would have corrected it). This appeal process (with a 60-day response clock) has not gone anywhere and we seem to be stuck in this "loop" without any way to resolve this. I suspect that something happened during the migration from the former hardware developer portal to the current on that resulted in our hardware developer account not being correctly associated with our Entra ID. I think Tier 1 support is misclassifying this as a compliance issue when it is really a backend account issue. I can't find any available tools to attempt to resolve this ourselves. Support channels I have tried so far include multiple tickets with the Partner Center, Microsoft 365, and sending escalation emails to prior partner support channels (that now bounce back). Has anyone in the community experienced anything similar with hardware developer center access and if so, were you able to resolve it? I am running out of ideas for how to get this in front of the right support folks at Microsoft so we can forward and this has already delayed a product launch by ~90 days. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer, Ryan
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