Download the Windows Driver Kit (WDK)

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

You can run the WDK 10.0.22621.2428 (released October 24, 2023) on Windows 7 and later to target Windows 10, Windows Server 2016 and later client and server versions.

To target Windows 8.1, Windows 8, and Windows 7, install an older WDK and an older version of Visual Studio either on the same machine or on a separate machine. For links to older kits, see Other WDK downloads.

Join the Windows Insider Program to get WDK Insider Preview builds. For installation instructions for the Windows Insider Preview builds, see Installing preview versions of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK).

download icon. Step 1: Install Visual Studio 2022

The WDK requires Visual Studio. For more information about system requirements for Visual Studio, see Visual Studio 2022 System Requirements.

The following editions of Visual Studio 2022 support driver development for this release:

When you install Visual Studio 2022, select the Desktop development with C++ workload, then under Individual Components add:

  • MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ ARM64/ARM64EC Spectre-mitigated libs (Latest)
  • MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 Spectre-mitigated libs (Latest)
    Hint: Use the Search box to look for "msvc 64 latest" or "msvc 64 latest spectre" to quickly see these components.

Don't worry about the SDK at this point; you install this next in step 2 below.

download icon. Step 2: Install SDK

After you've successfully installed Visual Studio, your next step is to download the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK).

The provided links for the SDK and the WDK have matching build numbers, which is always required for the kits to work together. If you decide to install your own SDK/WDK pair, perhaps for a different Windows version, ensure that the build numbers match.

download icon. Step 3: Install WDK

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

Tip

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\VS2022\10.0.22621.2428\WDK.vsix.

download icon. Enterprise WDK (EWDK)

As an alternative to downloading Visual Studio, the SDK, and the WDK, you can download the EWDK, which is a standalone, self-contained command-line environment for building drivers. It includes Visual Studio Build Tools, the SDK, and the WDK.

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

The latest public version of the EWDK contains Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools 17.1.5 and MSVC toolset v14.31.

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.

Once you have downloaded the ISO, use these steps to set up your build environment:

  1. Mount the EWDK ISO from a drive volume. Network share paths aren't currently supported.
  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. For example: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\%Community|Professional|Enterprise%\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe"
  5. When you're done with the build environment, you may want to eject the ISO.

Note that the Visual Studio major version should match with the version in the EWDK. For example, Visual Studio 2022 works with the EWDK that contain VS17.X build tools. For a list of Visual Studio 2022 version numbers, see Visual Studio 2022 Releases.

Driver samples for Windows

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

See also