Avoiding NDIS Power Management Problems (NDIS 5.1)
Note NDIS 5. x has been deprecated and is superseded by NDIS 6. x. For new NDIS driver development, see Network Drivers Starting with Windows Vista. For information about porting NDIS 5. x drivers to NDIS 6. x, see Porting NDIS 5.x Drivers to NDIS 6.0.
Adhering to the following rules will help you avoid power-management problems with your NIC:
A NIC must always report its power management capabilities to the bus driver.
Do not try to enable or disable power management for a NIC based on registry settings. NDIS obtains power management information about the NIC from the bus driver before the NIC's miniport driver is initialized. If the information obtained from the bus driver indicates that the NIC is not PM-capable, NDIS treats the NIC as a legacy NIC and does not issue an OID_PNP_CAPABILITIES request to the NIC's miniport driver.
Do not attempt to provide custom power-management controls in the user interface.