Download the Windows Driver Kit (WDK)

The WDK is used to develop, test, and deploy Windows drivers.

Runtime requirements

You can run the Windows 10, version 2004 WDK on Windows 7 and later, and use it to develop drivers for these operating systems:

Client OS	Server OS
Windows 10	Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016
Windows 8.1	Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows 8	Windows Server 2012
Windows 7	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

WDK for Windows 10, version 2004

Step 1: Install Visual Studio 2019

The WDK requires Visual Studio. For more information about system requirements for Visual Studio, see Visual Studio 2019 System Requirements.

The following editions of Visual Studio 2019 support driver development for this release:

When you install Visual Studio 2019, select the Desktop development with C++ workload. The Windows 10 Software Development Kit (SDK) is automatically included, and is displayed in the right-hand Summary pane. Note that the version of the SDK that is compatible with the WDK for Windows 10, version 2004 may not be the default SDK. To select the correct SDK:

In Visual Studio Installer, on the Individual components tab, search for Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.0), select this version and continue with install. Note that Visual Studio will automatically install Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.1) on your machine.

If you already have Visual Studio 2019 installed, you can install the Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.1) by using the Modify button in Visual Studio install.

WDK has Spectre mitigation enabled by default but requires spectre mitigated libraries to be installed with Visual Studio for each architecture you are developing for. Additionally, developing drivers for ARM/ARM64 require the build tools for these architectures to also be installed with Visual Studio. To locate these items you will need to know the latest version of MSVC installed on your system.

To find the latest version of MSVC installed on your system, in Visual Studio Installer go to workload page, on the right pane under installation details, expand Desktop development with C++ and locate the MSVC v142 — VS 2019 C++ x64/x86 build tools (V14.xx) — note where xx should be the highest version available.

With this information (v14.xx), go to Individual components and search for v14.xx. This will return the tool sets for all architectures, including Spectre mitigated libs. Select the driver architecture you are developing for.

For example, searching for v14.25 returns the following:

Step 1.5 Install Refreshed Windows SDK 10.0.19041.685 for Windows 10, version 2004

This SDK is strongly recommended and will eventually be made available through Visual Studio

Step 2: Install Refreshed WDK for Windows 10, version 2004

The WDK Visual Studio extension is included in the default WDK installation.

If you can’t find driver project templates in Visual Studio, the WDK Visual Studio extension didn’t install properly. To resolve this, run the WDK.vsix file from this location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Vsix\VS2019\WDK.vsix.

Enterprise WDK (EWDK) for Windows 10, version 2004

The EWDK is a standalone, self-contained command-line environment for building drivers. It includes the Visual Studio Build Tools, the SDK, and the WDK. The latest public version of the EWDK contains Visual Studio 2019 Build Tools 16.7.0 and MSVC toolset v14.23. To get started, mount the ISO and run LaunchBuildEnv.

The EWDK also requires the .NET Framework version 4.7.2. For more information about other requirements for the .NET Framework, see .NET Framework system requirements.

EWDK with Visual Studio Build Tools

You can use the Visual Studio interface with the build tools provided in the EWDK.

1. Mount the EWDK ISO.
2. Run LaunchBuildEnv.cmd .
3. In the environment created in step 2, type SetupVSEnv, and then press Enter.
4. Launch devenv.exe from the same environment, using the full file path. Example: «C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\\%Community|Professional|Enterprise%\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe»

Note that the Visual Studio major version should match with the version in the EWDK. For example, Visual Studio 2019 works with the EWDK that contain VS16.X build tools.

Driver samples for Windows 10

To download the driver samples, do one of the following:

• Go to the driver samples page on GitHub, click Clone or download, and then click Download ZIP.
• Download the GitHub Extension for Visual Studio, and then connect to the GitHub repositories.
• Browse the driver samples on the Microsoft Samples portal.

Installing preview versions of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK)

This page contains installation instructions for Insider Preview (pre-release) versions of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK). The download links for the latest pre-release version of the WDK and the EWDK are on https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windowsinsiderpreviewWDK.

For info about the latest released versions of the WDK, see Download the Windows Driver Kit (WDK). For downloads of earlier versions of the WDK, see Other WDK downloads.

Install Windows Driver Kit (WDK) Insider Preview

1. Install Visual Studio

• The WDK now supports Visual Studio 2019. All editions are supported. The WDK no longer supports Visual Studio 2017.
• Download from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/preview/.
• Select workload: Development with C++.
• ARM: To build ARM drivers you must additionally install the component: Individual components -> Compilers, build tools, and runtimes -> Visual C++ compilers and libraries for ARM.
• ARM64: Currently not supported.

2. Disable strong name validation

The WDK Visual Studio Extensions are currently not strong name signed. Run the following commands from an elevated command prompt to disable strong name validation:

3. Install SDK Insider Preview

4. Install WDK Insider Preview

During installation you will see the Visual Studio installer install the WDK Visual Studio Extensions.

Install Enterprise WDK (EWDK) Insider Preview

The EWDK is a standalone self-contained command-line environment for building drivers. It includes Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019, the SDK, the WDK and support for ARM64 driver development. See more at Installing the Enterprise WDK.

To get started, disable strong name validation by running the following commands from an elevated command prompt:

Then mount the ISO that you downloaded from the Insider Preview page and select LaunchBuildEnv to use the EWDK.

Run-time requirements for the WDK and the EWDK

The WDK requires Visual Studio. For more info about system requirements for Visual Studio, see Visual Studio 2019 System Requirements.

In addition, the EWDK requires .NET 4.7.2. For more info about what .NET runs on, see .NET Framework system requirements.

You can use the WDK Insider Preview and the EWDK Insider Preview to develop drivers for these operating systems:

Other WDK downloads

This topic contains information about earlier versions of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK), Enterprise WDK (EWDK), and additional downloads for support purposes. To develop drivers, use the latest public versions of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) and tools, available for download on Download the Windows Driver Kit (WDK).

The Windows Driver Kit (WDK) is used to develop, test, and deploy Windows drivers. To develop drivers, use the latest public versions of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) and tools, available for download on Download the Windows Driver Kit (WDK).

This topic contains information about earlier versions of the WDK, the Enterprise WDK (EWDK), and additional downloads for support purposes. To use these earlier versions, you must first install the version of Visual Studio that is appropriate for your targeted platform.

Runtime requirements

You can run the Windows 10, version 1903 WDK on Windows 7 and later, and use it to develop drivers for these operating systems:

Client OS	Server OS
Windows 10	Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016
Windows 8.1	Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows 8	Windows Server 2012
Windows 7	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

Step 1: Install Visual Studio

The WDK requires Visual Studio. For more information about system requirements for Visual Studio, see Visual Studio 2019 System Requirements.

The following table indicates which Visual Studio version is required for the different releases of the WDK.

Targeted versions of Windows	Edition(s) of Visual Studio
Windows 10, version 1903	Visual Studio Community 2019 Visual Studio Professional 2019 Visual Studio Enterprise 2019
Windows 10, version 1809 Windows 10, version 1803 Windows 10, version 1709	Visual Studio Community 2017 Visual Studio Professional 2017 Visual Studio Enterprise 2017
Windows 10, version 1703 Windows 10, version 1607	Visual Studio Express 2015 for Desktop Visual Studio Community 2015 Visual Studio Professional 2015 Visual Studio Enterprise 2015
Windows 8.1 Update Windows 8.1	Visual Studio 2013
Windows 8	Visual Studio Professional 2012 Visual Studio Ultimate 2012

Configure Visual Studio for Windows 10, versions 1709, 1803, 1809 and 1903

When you install Visual Studio, select the Desktop development with C++ workload. The Windows 10 Software Development Kit (SDK) is automatically included and is displayed in the right-hand Summary pane.

To develop drivers for ARM/ARM64, choose Individual components and under Compilers, build tools, and runtimes select Visual C++ compilers and libraries for ARM/ARM64.

Install the Windows SDK to target Windows 10, versions 1607 and 1703

If your development targets systems that run Windows 10, version 1607 or Windows 10, version 1703, you should install Visual Studio 2015, and then also download and install the version of the Windows SDK for the targeted version of Windows 10, as identified in the following table.

Targeted versions of Windows	Version of Windows SDK
Windows 10, version 1703	Windows SDK for Windows 10.0.15063.468
Windows 10, version 1607	Windows SDK for Windows 10.0.14393.795
Windows 8.1	Windows SDK for Windows 8.1
Windows 8	Windows SDK for Windows 8

The Windows SDK was not included in Visual Studio 2015, so you must install the SDK separately. Later versions of Visual Studio include the Windows SDK.

Step 2: Install the WDK

The WDK is integrated with Visual Studio and Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg). This integrated environment gives you the tools you need to develop, build, package, deploy, test, and debug drivers.

Starting with Windows 10, version 1709, installing the WDK will by default install the WDK extensions for Visual Studio. These extensions are required for integration of the WDK with Visual Studio.

Versions of Windows	WDK and related downloads
Windows 10, version 2004	WDK for Windows 10, version 2004 (10.1094.1)* See Note below
Windows 10, version 1903	WDK for Windows 10, version 1903
Windows 10, version 1809	WDK for Windows 10, version 1809
Windows 10, version 1803	WDK for Windows 10, version 1803
Windows 10, version 1709	WDK for Windows 10, version 1709
Windows 10, version 1703	WDK for Windows 10, version 1703
Windows 10, version 1607	WDK for Windows 10, version 1607
Windows 8.1 Update	WDK 8.1 Update (English only) — temporarily unavailable WDK 8.1 Update Test Pack (English only) — temporarily unavailable WDK 8.1 Samples
Windows 8	WDK 8 (English only) WDK 8 redistributable components (English only) WDK 8 Samples
Windows 7	WDK 7.1.0

Please review Hardware development kits for Windows 10, Version 2004, which addresses a bug with ExAllocatePoolZero.

If you have installed the WDK for Windows 10, version 1703 on a system that had the WDK for Windows 10, version 1607 installed, some files from the earlier version of the WDK might have been removed. To restore these files:

1. On the Start menu, enter Apps & features in the search box, and select Apps & features from the results.
2. Find Windows Driver Kit — Windows 10.0.15063.0 in the list of Apps & Features, and then select the program.
3. Select Modify, select Repair, and then follow the directions on the screen.
4. The files will be restored.

Optional: Install the EWDK

The Enterprise WDK (EWDK) is a standalone, self-contained, command-line environment for building drivers and basic Win32 test applications. It includes the Visual Studio Build Tools, the SDK, and the WDK. This environment doesn’t include all the features available in Visual Studio, such as the integrated development environment (IDE).

Using the EWDK requires .NET Framework 4.6.1. For more information about which systems run this version of the framework, see .NET Framework system requirements. For links to download the .NET Framework, see Install the .NET Framework for developers.

For more information about the EWDK, see Using the Enterprise WDK 10.

Versions of Windows	EWDK
Windows 10, version 1903	EWDK for Windows 10, version 1903
Windows 10, version 1809	EWDK for Windows 10, version 1809
Windows 10, version 1803	EWDK for Windows 10, version 1803
Windows 10, version 1709	EWDK for Visual Studio with Build Tools 15.6 (Recommended) EWDK for Visual Studio with Build Tools 15.4 EWDK for Visual Studio with Build Tools 15.2
Windows 10, version 1703	EWDK for Windows 10, version 1703

Starting in Windows 10 version 1709, the EWDK is ISO-based. To get started, download and mount the ISO, and then run LaunchBuildEnv.

Optional: Install updated test certificates for HAL extensions

To work with HAL Extensions, prepare your development system, running Windows 10, version 1709 or a later version of Windows 10. Also install the WDK or the EWDK, and then install the updated version of the Windows OEM HAL Extension Test Cert 2017 (TEST ONLY), available for download as a ZIP file: HAL_Extension_Test_Cert_2017.zip.

For more information about using this updated certificate, see Update for «Windows OEM HAL Extension Test Cert 2017 (TEST ONLY)» test certificate on Windows Support.

Optional: Install WinDbg Preview

WinDbg Preview is a new version of WinDbg with more modern visuals, faster windows, a full-fledged scripting experience, built with the extensible debugger data model front and center. WinDbg Preview supports debugging every version of Windows 10.

For download links and more information about WinDbg Preview, see Download WinDbg Preview.

Standalone tools for debugging Windows XP and Windows Vista

If you’re debugging Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Windows Server 2008 (or using one of these operating systems to run Debugging Tools for Windows), you need to use the Windows 7 release of the debugging tools. It’s included in the SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4.0.

Newer versions of the Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable can cause issues when you install the SDK for Windows 7.

Get the standalone debugging tools for Windows XP by first downloading the Windows 7 SDK: Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4.

To install the Debugging Tools for Windows as a standalone component, start the SDK installer, and in the installation wizard, select Debugging Tools for Windows, and clear all other components.