Disclosed is a framework that provides a method for testing device driver installation tasks which would otherwise have to be done manually using actual hardware. By providing the capability to dynamically create the appearance of many types of hardware devices installed on the system the need to have test machines with the actual hardware is eliminated. In one embodiment a driver handler object framework is implemented which can be used to simulate the presence of hardware devices and drivers. By using these drivers and test packages (or actual driver packages), testing can be accomplished without the large investment or requirement of additional hardware and software. The driver handler object framework also provides a set of methods, objects, and xml schema definitions that can be used with the pseudo device drivers to setup, install, verify, and clean-up the test systems in preparation and support of driver installations and updates.