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So I'm porting an old 32bit NIC driver which was written for NDIS 5.0. I'm targeting (if possible) all 64bit Windows versions starting from XP. What NDIS version to use? From what I've read it should be less then 6 because then Windows XP x64 won't be supported - is this true (I'm wondering because the x64 version of XP is not so conventional)?

Also what WDK version to use - I'm thinking of 7.1 but I don't know maybe even the newer 8.0, 8.1 and 10 somehow support Windows XP x64 NDIS?

I'm asking because from what I see the NDIS versions are all very different and I don't want to start re-writing my driver from scratch again.

And another question I'm wondering - what have NDIS to do with WDK? Does WDK have versions too (sorry if the question is stupid but I've never developed drivers before)? I see that there are NDIS-WDM drivers.

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  • NDIS drivers earlier than 6.0 are not guaranteed to install on Windows 10. The driver install code was rewritten, and there are some bugs in the backward compatibility that Microsoft is choosing not to fix because they affect so few people. – jeffm Dec 25 '15 at 17:50

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This post provides good information about OS and NDIS version compatibility: The compatibility issue between NDIS version and Windows version

The WDK usually supports only current OS and 1-3 down-level OS. Windows 10 WDK would let you build for Win7, Win8, WIn8.1, Win10. To get WinXP support, you need to go down to WDK 7.1.0. This wiki provides the details of the down-level OS supported: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Driver_Kit. There isn't a way to use one version of WDK to get the driver built all the way from winXP to win10.

WDK is tied to OS versions and not NDIS. You need to pick the WDK corresponding to the OS you are targeting. There is a version of WDK released for each major release of Windows and during every release, the support for a down-level OS version might be dropped or retained.

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