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NDIS Versions in Network Drivers

If you are writing an NDIS driver for more than one version of Microsoft Windows, be sure the features that you are using are supported on each Windows version. New features have been added to NDIS with each release. Other features became obsolete and were removed from later NDIS versions.

This set of design guide documentation is targeted at Windows Vista and later operating systems and NDIS 6.0 and later drivers. Documentation for earlier Windows and NDIS versions is contained in prior releases of the documentation. For the Windows XP and NDIS 5.1 documentation, see Windows 2000 and Windows XP Networking Design Guide.

Note A driver can query the NDIS version by calling the NdisReadConfiguration function with the Keyword parameter set to NdisVersion.

Windows operating system, Microsoft Windows Driver Kit (WDK), and Driver Development Kit (DDK) version support for NDIS versions, as well as support for major NDIS features across NDIS versions, are described in the following table.

Operating system	Development Kit	Supported NDIS version	CoNDIS	Deserialized driver	Intermediate driver
Windows 95/	Windows NT 4.0 DDK or Windows 95 DDK	3.1
		Added support for miniport drivers and Plug and Play.
Windows 95 OSR2	Windows NT 4.0 DDK or Windows 95 DDK	4.0
		Protocol driver is a vxd-type driver.
Windows 98	Windows NT 4.0 DDK or Windows 98 DDK	4.1	X	X	X
		Protocol driver is a vxd-type driver.
Windows 98 SE	Windows NT 4.0 DDK or Windows 98 DDK	5.0	X	X	X
		Added support for Power Management and WMI.
Windows Me	Windows NT 4.0 DDK or Windows 98 DDK for Vxds	5.0	X	X	X
Windows NT 3.5	Windows NT 3.5 DDK	3.0
Windows NT 4.0	Windows NT 4.0 DDK	4.0
		Added these features: MiniportSendPackets ProtocolReceivePacket MiniportAllocateComplete
Windows NT 4.0 SP3	Windows NT DDK with updated NDIS header and library	4.1	X	X	X
Windows 2000	Windows 2000 DDK	5.0	X	X	X
		Added support for: New INF file format compatible with Windows 95/98/Me Plug and Play and Power Management WMI LBFO Scatter/gather DMA support for deserialized miniport drivers
Windows XP	Windows XP DDK	5.1	X	X	X
		Added support for: MiniportCancelSendPackets MiniportPnPEventNotify MiniportShutdown NdisCancelSendPackets NdisCopyFromPacketToPacketSafe NdisGeneratePartialCancelId NdisGetFirstBufferFromPacketSafe NdisGetPoolFromPacket NdisGetSharedDataAlignment NdisIMGetCurrentPacketStack NdisIMNotifyPnPEvent NdisQueryPendingIOCount NDIS_GET_PACKET_CANCEL_ID NDIS_SET_PACKET_CANCEL_ID OID_GEN_MACHINE_NAME New miniport driver attribute flags 64-bit statistical counters Remote NDIS Scatter/gather support for both serialized and deserialized miniport drivers Packet stacking for intermediate drivers VLAN tagging Offloading the Processing of UDP-Encapsulated ESP Packets (Windows Server 2003 only) Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) in Windows XP SP1 Dropped support for: Full Mac drivers NDIS 3.0 protocols NdisQueryMapRegisterCount EISA bus
Windows Vista	Windows Vista WDK	6.0	X	X	X
		Major improvements in the following provide significant performance gains for both clients and servers: Network data packaging Send and receive paths Run-time reconfiguration capabilities Scatter/gather DMA Filter drivers Multiprocessor scaling of received data handling Offloading TCP tasks to NICs The following improvements simplify driver development: Streamlined driver initialization Versioning support for NDIS interfaces Simplified reset handling A standard interface for obtaining management information A filter driver model to replace filter intermediate drivers For more information about NDIS 6.0 features, see Introduction to NDIS 6.0. For information about backward compatibility and obsolete features that are not supported in NDIS 6.0 drivers, see NDIS 6.0 Backward Compatibility.
Windows Vista SP1	Windows Server 2008 Windows Vista WDK with updated NDIS header and library	6.1	X	X	X
		For information about NDIS 6.1 features, see Introduction to NDIS 6.1.
Windows 7	Windows 7 WDK with updated NDIS header and library	6.20	X	X	X
		For information about NDIS 6.20 features, see Introduction to NDIS 6.20. For information about backward compatibility and obsolete features that are not supported in NDIS 6.20 drivers, see NDIS 6.20 Backward Compatibility.
Windows 8	Windows 8 WDK with updated NDIS header and library	6.30	X	X	X
		For information about NDIS 6.30 features, see Introduction to NDIS 6.30.

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Build date: 5/21/2013