New drivers for ReactOS / older windows

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cordata
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jun 24, 2015 4:46 am

New drivers for ReactOS / older windows

Post by cordata »

I'm curious what the plans are (if any) for driver support of newer hardware with ReactOS.

From what I gather today you generally find a driver from NT/2000/XP and install with ReactOS. Does anyone have any ideas on what to do with newer hardware?

I have a specific interest in Ethernet cards and the Linux IGB driver - has anyone investigated how to port this over to windows ? Is it completely impossible to use Win7 drivers with XP or ReactOS?

Any ideas or resources appreciated, thanks.
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Michael Long
Posts: 40
Joined: Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:51 pm

Re: New drivers for ReactOS / older windows

Post by Michael Long »

I tried to install a bunch of Windows XP drivers on ReactOS and I always failed. The installation failed or the system didn't boot anymore. I was able to replace an usb related file/driver. I copied C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\usbehci.sys from Windows XP to C:\ReactOS\system32\drivers\usbehci.sys after I installed ReactOS with a half finished version of USB support by one of the developers (going by the name vgal). That made USB working. But if I do the same with the normal ReactOS version then booting does not work anymore.

In general the current plan is to be compatible with Windows NT up to Windows Server 2003.

There are not many developers who care about and are able to help in hardware support. But if you report an issue like "optional fancy theme has a slight graphical glitch" then you will have instant attention of half of the developer team. But that's just my impression so far.

Regarding Windows: I wasn't able to install a Windows 7 driver on Windows XP yet, but I was able to use a driver for an old version of an ethernet adapter by realtek for a newer version of the adapter. The driver for the old version was for Windows XP. The driver for the new version was for Windows 7 if I remember correctly. So I could get the newer ethernet adapter running in Windows XP with the old driver. But somehow Linux uses the adapter as a 1 gigabit/s adapter while Windows uses it as a 100 megabit/s adapter. So it works but not fully. If I remember correctly then I could do the same thing with a realtek sound adapter. But the microphone was always very very quiet so I built myself a hardware amplifier. Now the microphone is just a little quiet.
decumanus
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Jul 05, 2008 9:02 am

Re: New drivers for ReactOS / older windows

Post by decumanus »

Driver API changed a lot between XP/2003 and Vista+ . So, supporting new drivers will need a big rewrite.
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