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Windows Driver Kit
Developer(s)Microsoft
Initial release1992; 32 years ago (1992)
Stable release
10.1 / November 1, 2015; 8 years ago (2015-11-01)
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows
Available inEnglish
LicenseProprietary commercial software
Websitedocs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/index Edit this at Wikidata

The Windows Driver Kit (WDK) is a software toolset from Microsoft that enables the development of device drivers for the Microsoft Windows platform.[1] It includes documentation, samples, build environments, and tools for driver developers.[2] A complete toolset for driver development also need the following: a compiler Visual Studio, Windows SDK, and Windows HLK.

History

Previously, the WDK was known as the Driver Development Kit (DDK)[3] and supported Windows Driver Model (WDM) development. It got its current name when Microsoft released Windows Vista and added the following previously separated tools to the kit: Installable File System Kit (IFS Kit), Driver Test Manager (DTM), though DTM was later renamed and removed from WDK again.

The DDK for Windows 2000 and earlier versions did not include a compiler; instead one had to install Visual C++ separately to compile drivers. From the version for Windows XP the DDK and later the WDK include a command-line compiler to compile drivers. One of the reasons Microsoft gave for including a compiler was that the quality of drivers would improve if they were compiled with the same version of the compiler that was used to compile Windows itself while Visual C++ is targeted to application development and has a different product cycle with more frequent changes. The WDK 8.x and later series goes back to require installing a matched version of Visual Studio separately, but this time the integration is more complete in that you can edit, build and debug the driver from within Visual Studio directly.

DDK versions

Version Build number Release date
Windows 3.0 DDK 1990 (1990)
Windows 3.1 DDK 1992 (1992)
Windows NT 3.1 DDK 1993 (1993)
Windows NT 3.5 DDK 1994 (1994)
Windows NT 3.51 DDK 1025.1 July 1995 (1995-07)
Windows 95 DDK October 1995 (1995-10)
Windows 95 DDK a June 1996 (1996-06)
Windows 95 DDK b
Windows 95 DDK c (MSDN July 1998) June 1998 (1998-06)
Windows NT DDK (for Windows NT Workstation 3.51) July 1996 (1996-07)
Windows NT DDK (for Windows NT Workstation 4.0) 1381.1 August 1996 (1996-08)
Windows 98 DDK July 1998 (1998-07)
Windows 98 SE DDK May 1999 (1999-05)
Windows 2000 DDK 2195.1 February 2000 (2000-02)
Windows XP Driver Development Kit (DDK) 2600 September 21, 2001 (2001-09-21)
Windows XP SP1 Driver Development Kit (DDK) 2600.1106 November 14, 2002 (2002-11-14)
Windows Server 2003 DDK 3790 April 9, 2003 (2003-04-09)
Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 DDK 3790.1830 April 6, 2005 (2005-04-06)

Note: Windows NT DDK, Windows 98 DDK and Windows 2000 DDK are no longer made available by Microsoft because of Java-related settlements made by Microsoft with Sun Microsystems.[4]

WDK versions

Version Build number Release date Develops drivers for Visual Studio integration Notes
Windows Driver Kit for Windows Vista 6000 November 29, 2006 (2006-11-29) Windows Vista - -
Windows Driver Kit – Server 2008 (x86, x64, ia64) 6001.18000 Jan 2008 Windows XP SP1 – Vista SP1, Windows Server 2000 SP4 – 2008 - -
Windows Driver Kit – Server 2008 (x86, x64, ia64) 6001.18001 April 1, 2008 (2008-04-01) - - -
Windows Driver Kit – Server 2008 Release SP1 (x86, x64, i64) 6001.18002 December 8, 2008 (2008-12-08) Windows XP SP1 – Vista SP1, Windows Server 2000 SP4 – 2008 SP1 - -
Windows Driver Kit 7.0.0 7600.16385.0 August 6, 2009 (2009-08-06) Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 - -
Windows Driver Kit 7.1.0 7600.16385.1 February 26, 2010 (2010-02-26) Windows XP SP3 – 7, Windows Server 2003 SP1 – 2008 R2 - [5]
Windows Driver Kit 8.0 8.59.25584 August 15, 2012 (2012-08-15) Windows 7 – 8, Windows Server 2008 R2 – 2012 Visual Studio 2012 Downloads before 8/17/2012 had a bug in WDF co-installer[6]
Windows Driver Kit 8.1 8.100.26638 September 16, 2013 (2013-09-16) Windows 7 – 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2 – 2012 R2 Visual Studio 2013[7] -
Windows Driver Kit 8.1 Update 8.100.26846 August 20, 2014 (2014-08-20) Windows 7 – 8.1 Update, Windows Server 2008 R2 – 2012 R2 Visual Studio 2013 -
Windows Driver Kit 10, Version 1507 10.0.26639 July 2015 Windows 7 SP1 – 10 Visual Studio 2015 RTM – Update 3 -
Windows Driver Kit 10, Version 1511 10.0.10586 November 2015 Windows 7 SP1 – 10 Version 1511 Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 – 3 Windows 10 November Update
Windows Driver Kit 10, Version 1607 10.0.14393 August 2016 Windows 7 SP1 – 10 Version 1607 (Excludes Win10 Version 1507 & 1511) Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 Windows 10 Anniversary Update
Windows Driver Kit 10, Version 1703 10.0.15063 April 2017 Windows 7 SP1 – 10 (Version 1607 & 1703 only), Windows Server 2008 R2 – 2016 Visual Studio 2017 Ver.15.1 Windows 10 Creators Update
Windows Driver Kit 10, Version 1709 10.0.16299 October 2017 Visual Studio 2017 Ver.15.4 Windows 10 Fall Creators Update
Windows Driver Kit 10, Version 1803 10.0.17134 April 2018 Windows 10 April 2018 Update
Windows Driver Kit 10, Version 1809[8] 10.0.17763 October 2018 Windows 10 October 2018 Update
Windows Driver Kit 10, Version 1903 10.0.18362.1 April 2019 Windows 7 SP1 – 10 (Version 1607 to 1903), Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 – 2019 Visual Studio 2019 Ver.16 Windows 10 May 2019 Update

See also

References

  1. ^ Enrico Perla; Massimiliano Oldani (2010). A Guide to Kernel Exploitation; Attacking the Core. Elsevier Science. p. 277. ISBN 9781597494878.
  2. ^ BHATT, PRAMOD CHANDRA P. (2019). AN INTRODUCTION TO OPERATING SYSTEMS : CONCEPTS AND PRACTICE (GNU/LINUX AND WINDOWS), FIFTH EDITION. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. p. 529. ISBN 9789387472884.
  3. ^ Bill Blunden (2009). The Rootkit Arsenal; Escape and Evasion. Jones & Bartlett Learning. p. 142. ISBN 9781449661229.
  4. ^ MSDN: Products Unavailable due to Java-related Settlement
  5. ^ [1] Windows Driver Kit Version 7.1.0
  6. ^ WDF co-installer issue
  7. ^ Kraig Brockschmidt (2014). Programming Windows Store Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Pearson Education. p. 1002. ISBN 9780735695702.
  8. ^ Liu, Zhifeng; Zheng, Desheng; Wu, Xinlong; Chen, Jixin; Tang, Xiaolan; Ran, Ziyong (2021). VABox: A Virtualization-Based Analysis Framework of Virtualization-Obfuscated Packed Executables. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Security. Springer International Publishing. pp. 73–84. ISBN 9783030786212. We use Visual Studio 2017 and WDK for Windows 10, version 1809 for development.
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