Vista backward compatibility for NDIS 5.1 miniport drivers

NTDEV
1

We have a fully functional NDIS 5.1 WiFi Miniport driver which was thoroughly tested and is working perfectly under Windows XP.
Recently we updated the .INF file and successfully installed the same driver under Windows VISTA.
We did not change anything in the driver’s source code hoping it will run correctly under VISTA.
However we encountered the following problems:

  1. After the DriverEntry() and the InitializeHandler are called we start getting OIDs
    which are specific to NDIS 6.0 and since we register as NDIS 5.1, we do not treat
    those OIDs correctly.
  2. We are NOT getting the OIDs we used to get: like OID_802_11_BSSID_LIST_SCAN and OID_802_11_BSSID_LIST
    As we used to with NDIS 5.1 under Windows XP.
    Is it possible in some cases NDIS 6.0 is not fully backward compatible with NDIS 5.1?
    When we register our miniport we definitly specified that our Ndis version is 5.1.
    Is it possible VISTA mistakenly “thinks” our driver is NDIS 6.0 instead of NDIS 5.1?

Are we required to apply any minor changes to our source code?

2

What exactly do you mean by

… we updated the .INF file

The INF should have stayed the same if you continue to have a NDIS5x style (monolithic) WiFi Miniport.

If you went and updated the INF to tell the system that your Miniport/Driver is now a new ExtSta style WiFi driver but it is in fact *not* such a driver, I suppose it is possible that you might get all sorts of OIDs that are inappropriate.

What happens when you install it with the INF that “works perfectly” under Windows XP?

Good Luck,
Dave Cattley
Consulting Engineer
Systems Software Development

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@giant-steps.com
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 8:41 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Vista backward compatibility for NDIS 5.1 miniport drivers

We have a fully functional NDIS 5.1 WiFi Miniport driver which was thoroughly tested and is working perfectly under Windows XP.
Recently we updated the .INF file and successfully installed the same driver under Windows VISTA.
We did not change anything in the driver’s source code hoping it will run correctly under VISTA.
However we encountered the following problems:

  1. After the DriverEntry() and the InitializeHandler are called we start getting OIDs
    which are specific to NDIS 6.0 and since we register as NDIS 5.1, we do not treat
    those OIDs correctly.
  2. We are NOT getting the OIDs we used to get: like OID_802_11_BSSID_LIST_SCAN and OID_802_11_BSSID_LIST
    As we used to with NDIS 5.1 under Windows XP.
    Is it possible in some cases NDIS 6.0 is not fully backward compatible with NDIS 5.1?
    When we register our miniport we definitly specified that our Ndis version is 5.1.
    Is it possible VISTA mistakenly “thinks” our driver is NDIS 6.0 instead of NDIS 5.1?

Are we required to apply any minor changes to our source code?

NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer