WDM: XP vs 2000

NTDEV
1

I’m wondering if a single binary (.sys) is sufficient for XP and 2000.
I have a 2000 WDM driver that seems to work fine under XP, but I want to
play it safe. I understand there were some problems with binary
compatibility between 95 and 200 WDM drivers.
Am I safe building a WDM driver with the Win2k DDK, and calling it a
2000/XP driver?
-Dave Taylor
AJA Video Systems

2

> I’m wondering if a single binary (.sys) is sufficient for XP and 2000.

I have a 2000 WDM driver that seems to work fine under XP, but I want to
play it safe. I understand there were some problems with binary
compatibility between 95 and 200 WDM drivers.

I have runned the 1394 stack from w2k beta on Win98 Gold for about a year.
So, “culturally” written WDM drivers are portable across w2k/Win98/WinMe/XP.

Am I safe building a WDM driver with the Win2k DDK, and calling it a
2000/XP driver?

Yes. Just test on both platforms.

Max

3

And I can add that even non-PnP sys, if well written and using only
functions of WDM subset can be used on Win98/ME and started from
standard registry location HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services.
However there are some issues about NTKERN compatibility with
NT systems. I must say that NTKERN has some bugs in it, so you
need runtime version checking (IoIsWdmVersionAvailable) and some
slight modifications depending on the platform type you’re running on.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Maxim S. Shatskih
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 8:40 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Re: WDM: XP vs 2000

I’m wondering if a single binary (.sys) is sufficient for XP and 2000.
I have a 2000 WDM driver that seems to work fine under XP, but I want to
play it safe. I understand there were some problems with binary
compatibility between 95 and 200 WDM drivers.

I have runned the 1394 stack from w2k beta on Win98 Gold for about a year.
So, “culturally” written WDM drivers are portable across w2k/Win98/WinMe/XP.

Am I safe building a WDM driver with the Win2k DDK, and calling it a
2000/XP driver?

Yes. Just test on both platforms.

Max

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4

Pavel or another guru,

do you know how to start a non-PnP sys dynamically (under 9x). I was
only able to start it via HKLM…Services after a reboot. That is
annoying !

| Norbert Kawulski | mailto:xxxxx@stollmann.de |
| Stollmann E+V GmbH, Development | http://www.stollmann.de |