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:

Windows driver kit visual studio 2017

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Answered by:

Question

I have a machine with VS2017 installed and I Was trying to install WDK 1709 from command line.

The WDK installation works fine (wdksetup.exe /q /features +) but it does not install VS extension.

i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Vsix is empty.

I know, if i install this manually, there is a post installation step to add extension. But I need to automate this provisioning for our CI agents.

Any hints are appreciated.

Answers

Thanks! From the logs I can see your installation succeded; I couldn’t find any traces of an error or rollback. I’ll keep investigating and if you find more logs, feel free to post them. In the future, if you were to stumble again with this kind of issues, try repairing your installation and make sure that you install a version newer than any other installed on your machine; historically most of the installation issues are caused by installing an older version of a kit on a machine.

Let me know if you have any other issue related to this.

All replies

How are you installing your WDK? Are you installing it on a clean machine? Does it have Visual Studio already installed? If possible, please provide your installation logs; they should be under %localappdata%\temp\WDK. From there we can debug what happened to the installation. In the meantime as a workaround, download completely the WDK, then, under the Installers folder look for » Windows Driver Kit Visual Studio Dev15 Content-x86_en-us.msi» and try an administrative install under a different folder (msiexec /a [installer path] TARGETPATH=[target path]); there you’ll find the WDK.vsix file.

Having the VSIX file, you can install it manually by using VSIXInstaller.exe. Look for it under «C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\resources\app\ServiceHub\Services\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Setup.Service». To use it, just type «VSIXInstaller.exe /q [WDK.vsix path]», which should install the VSIX across your VS instances automatically.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Thanks for the reply.

I have already applied the workaround by finding the SDK.vsix from an installed node and it seems to work.

I am actually trying to install on a machine which already have VS2017 installed.

Could not find a way to attach file, am I missing something.

Plus, how can i download the full msi ? apparantly, I can just download the online installer (.exe)

Visual Studio 2017 Platform Targeting and Compatibility

This is not the latest version of Visual Studio. To download the latest release, please visit the current release notes for Visual Studio 2019.

Visual Studio 2017 contains many new and exciting features and IDE productivity enhancements to support Windows app development, cross-platform mobile development, Azure development, web and cloud development, and more. To try out Visual Studio 2017, see Visual Studio 2017 Downloads. For more information about everything that’s new in this release, see the Visual Studio 2017 release notes and What’s New in Visual Studio 2017.

Installation

You can install and use Visual Studio 2017 alongside previous versions of Visual Studio, including Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio 2013, and Visual Studio 2012.

Download

Click a button to download the latest version of Visual Studio 2017. For instructions on installing and updating Visual Studio 2017, see the Update Visual Studio 2017 to the most recent release. Also, see instructions on how to install offline.

This is not the latest version of Visual Studio. To download the latest release, please visit the current release notes for Visual Studio 2019.

Visit the the Visual Studio downloads page to get the latest Visual Studio products.

Note: Installation package size will vary depending on your current Visual Studio configuration.

System Requirements

For information on the system requirements for installing and running the Visual Studio 2017 family of products, including Team Foundation Server 2017, see the Visual Studio 2017 System Requirement page and Visual Studio 2017 for Mac Product Family System Requirements.

Feedback and Support

For support, or to submit feedback on Visual Studio, see:

Upgrade Projects to Visual Studio 2017

When following the supported upgrade paths, your Visual Studio source, solutions, and project files will continue to work; however, you should expect to make some changes to sources. While we cannot guarantee binary compatibility between releases, we will do our best to document significant changes to assist you with updates.

For details on how to migrate your projects to Visual Studio 2017, see Porting, Migrating, and Upgrading Visual Studio Projects.

Platform Targeting

Visual Studio provides cutting-edge tools and technologies to create apps that take advantage of the latest platform capabilities, whether Windows, Android, iOS, or Linux. Visual Studio 2017 also targets earlier platforms so you can create new apps or modernize existing apps that execute on earlier versions of Windows while leveraging the enhanced development tools, quality enablement, and team collaboration capabilities in Visual Studio 2017. For more information, see Managing references in a project and Visual Studio Multi-Targeting Overview.

Visual Studio 2017 Support for Windows Development

The following table explains the Microsoft Windows platforms for which you can build apps by using Visual Studio 2017.

Build Apps that Run on Windows Clients	Using Tools for Native and Managed Classic Windows Desktop Development	Using Tools for UWP App Development
Windows 10	Yes (see notes below)	Yes (see notes below)
HoloLens	No	Yes See the Windows Holographic Dev Center.
Xbox One	Not applicable	Yes See the Xbox Dev Center.
Windows 8.1 (Windows 8)	Yes	Windows Store app development is not available.
Windows 7	Yes	Not applicable
Windows Vista	Yes Remote debugging and profiling tools are not available.	Not applicable
Windows XP	Yes Managed development requires using Visual Studio .NET multi-targeting. Remote debugging and profiling tools are not available.	Not applicable
Build Apps that Run on Windows Phone	Using Tools for Native and Managed Classic Windows Desktop Development	Using Tools for UWP App Development
Windows 10 Mobile	No	Yes (see notes below)
Windows Phone 8.1 and earlier	No	Windows Store app development is not available.
Build Apps that Run on Windows Server	Using Tools for Native and Managed Classic Windows Desktop Development	Using Tools for UWP App Development
Windows Server 2016	Yes	Yes (see notes below)
Windows Server 2016, Nano Server Installation Option	Yes, for .NET Core and a subset of Win32 See the Nano Server Dev Center.	No
Windows Server 2012 R2	Yes	Windows Store app development is not available.
Windows Server 2012	Yes	Windows Store app development is not available.
Windows Server 2008 R2	Yes	Not applicable
Windows Server 2008	Yes Remote debugging and profiling tools are not available.	Not applicable
Windows Server 2003	Yes Remote debugging and profiling tools are not available. Managed development requires using Visual Studio .NET multi-targeting and requires side-by-side installation of Visual Studio 2010. For more information, see: A Look Ahead at the Visual Studio 2012 Product Lineup and Platform Support.	Not applicable
Build Apps that Run on Windows Embedded Devices	Using Tools for Native and Managed Classic Windows Desktop Development	Using Tools for UWP App Development
Windows 10 IoT Core	Yes, for a subset of Win32 APIs See the IoT Core API Porting Tool for information.	Yes See the Windows IoT Dev Center for additional tools and resources.
Windows 10 IoT Mobile Enterprise	No	Yes See the Windows IoT Dev Center for additional tools and resources.
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise	Yes See the Windows IoT Dev Center for additional tools and resources.	Yes See the Windows IoT Dev Center for additional tools and resources.
Windows Embedded 8 Standard and 8.1 Industry	Yes	No
Windows Embedded Compact 2013	No	Not applicable
Windows Embedded 7 (Compact, Standard, and POSReady)	No	Not applicable
Windows Embedded CE 6.0 and earlier	No	Not applicable
Windows XP Embedded (Including POSReady 2009, WES 2009, WEPOS)	No	Not applicable

Notes

• For support information regarding Microsoft operating systems, see Microsoft Support Lifecycle and Windows 10 Release Information.
• For support information on Microsoft .NET Framework, see .NET Framework Support Lifecycle FAQ and .NET Framework System Requirements.
• Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB edition and Windows 10 S are not supported for development. You may use Visual Studio 2017 to build apps that run on Windows 10 LTSB and Windows 10 S. Remote debuging is supported on LTSB.
• Universal Windows app development for all target platforms is available when Visual Studio is installed on Windows 10.
• Universal Windows apps can be built from the command line when using Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2016. UWP development—including designing, editing, and local debugging—is not available on Windows Server. You may deploy these apps to Windows server and debug them remotely.
• Cordova, Unity, and Xamarin can also be used for cross-platform development of Universal Windows Apps on Windows 10.

Visual Studio 2017 Support for .NET Development

Visual Studio 2017 supports development of apps that use any of the .NET implementations. Among the workloads and project types, you can find support for .NET Framework, .NET Core, Mono, and .NET Native for Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Visual Studio 2017 supports the following implementations:

For more information on each of these implementations, and on the common API specification .NET Standard, see .NET architectural components.

Visual Studio 2017 Support for Android Development

Visual Studio 2017 enables you to build native Android apps using Xamarin and C# or using Java/C++, and hybrid Android apps using Apache Cordova 6.3.1 and JavaScript and TypeScript. The Visual Studio Tools for Unity and the Unreal Engine enable Android game development. You can also use Visual Studio for Mac to build Android apps using a Mac.

You can use Visual Studio setup to easily obtain the Android SDK and Android API levels 19, 21, 22, and 23. You can download additional API levels separately using the Android SDK Manager. You can also use Visual Studio Setup to obtain the Android Native Development Kit (R10E), Java SE Development Kit, and Apache Ant.

For information on .NET development for Android, see .NET architectural components.

Visual Studio 2017 Support for iOS Development

Visual Studio 2017 enables you to build and debug apps for iOS by using Apache Cordova, C++, Unity, or Xamarin and a Mac configured for iOS development when using remotebuild, vcremote, the Visual Studio Tools for Unity, or the Xamarin Mac Agent. Xamarin supports iOS 7 and higher, and requires OS X 10.10 «Yosemite» or higher. Apache Cordova supports iOS 8 and higher, and requires OS X 10.9 «Mavericks» and higher. You can also use Visual Studio for Mac to build iOS apps using a Mac.

For more information, see Cross-platform mobile development in Visual Studio. For information on .NET development for iOS, see .NET architectural components.

Visual Studio 2017 Support for Linux Development

Visual Studio 2017 enables you to build and debug apps for Linux using C++, Python, and Node.js. Creating C++ apps for Linux requires the Visual C++ for Linux Development extension. Creating apps with Python or Node,js, requires that you enable remote debugging on the target Linux machine. You can also create, build and remote debug .NET Core and ASP.NET Core applications for Linux using modern languages such as C#, VB and F#.

For information on .NET development for Linux, see .NET architectural components.

• CentOS 7.1 and Oracle Linux 7.1
• Debian 8
• Fedora 23
• Linux Mint 17
• openSUSE 13.2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2
• Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04

For more information see the .NET Core Website.

Visual Studio 2017 Support for macOS Development

Visual Studio 2017 enables you to build console applications and ASP.NET applications that target macOS. However, debugging is not supported. For additional macOS development tools choices, try Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio for Mac. Visual Studio Code provides a streamlined, extensible developer tool experience for macOS. Visual Studio for Mac provides a feature-rich IDE that enables you to build native macOS apps, including ASP.NET, using C#.

For information on .NET development forMacOS, see .NET architectural components.

Other Platforms and Technologies

Visual Studio 2017 also supports the following platforms and technologies. For more information, see https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/features/.

Compatibility with Previous Releases

.NET Framework

.NET 4.7 is is a highly compatible in-place update of .NET 4, 4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, and 4.6.2.

Team Explorer and Team Foundation Server

Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2017 will connect to Team Foundation Server 2017, Team Foundation Server 2015, Team Foundation Server 2013, Team Foundation Server 2012, and Team Foundation Server 2010 SP1.

Silverlight

Silverlight projects are not supported in this version of Visual Studio. To maintain Silverlight applications, continue to use Visual Studio 2015.

Windows Store and Windows Phone apps

Projects for Windows Store 8.1 and 8.0, and Windows Phone 8.1 and 8.0 are not supported in this release. To maintain these apps, continue to use Visual Studio 2015. To maintain Windows Phone 7.x projects, use Visual Studio 2012.