Was compatibility for NDIS 5.x drivers removed in

Question

I have an NDIS 5.x Passthru driver that was adapted from this sample. Obviously NDIS 6 has been available for quite some time, rendering 5.x obsolete, but backward compatibility has allowed the driver to continue to run in up to and including Windows 8.1 so the code has not been updated.

Now the same driver does not function on Windows 10. (Edited to add: The driver loads, but "netcfg /b" shows that it did not bind to any adapters.) The sys file is the same, installed the same way and with the same signature that works in Win8.1. I can't find any official source that NDIS 5.x compatibility has been removed from Windows 10, but I do find several people with the same problem who are speculating that is the case.

Do we know officially if NDIS 5.x compatibility been removed from Windows 10, and/or is there some kind of compatibility mode that can be activated to allow me to keep using my existing driver until I come up with Plan B?

Answer 1

No, NDIS backward compatibility was not removed in Windows 10. A new network class Installer called NetSetup was added with a shim for the old NetCfg calls. Apparently, there's a bug in the shim that causes drivers like mine to install but not bind to any adapters. They're assigning someone to work on it, and I will update this answer when there's a resolution.

Edited to add: Microsoft has decided not to resolve this issue because few are affected by it.