Installation

The driver must have a unique name to avoid conflicts with other software.

  • Rename the driver to <unique_driver_name>.sys and save it to the windows\system32\drivers folder. The given name is used as a substring in the driver internal devices to avoid conflicts with other driver instances and third-party drivers. The name must be unique for each project, because the driver doesn’t allow multiple attached processes.

  • Register and start the driver with a call to nfregdrv.exe <unique_driver_name> under an administrative account or call the API function nf_registerDriver(). Any application that uses the driver API tries to register the driver automatically during a call to nf_init(), if it is not yet registered. Administrative rights are required to perform this operation. The driver starts immediately after registration, and reboot is not required. The driver will be loaded automatically on each system startup. When the driver is registered and started, a client process doesn’t require administrative rights to use it via the API.

  • To unregister the driver, call nfregdrv.exe -u <unique_driver_name> or use the API function nf_unRegisterDriver(). Then delete the file windows\system32\drivers\<unique_driver_name>.sys and reboot. Administrative rights are required in both cases.

Use the 64-bit version of the driver (amd64 configuration) for 64-bit OSes. The 32-bit API works properly with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the driver. It is possible to use the 32-bit or 64-bit API on x64 platform, according to your project needs.

It is possible to unload and restart the driver dynamically by stopping and starting the Windows service with the driver name. To update the driver on Windows 10 and higher, it is necessary to stop the driver, because Windows 10 locks the files of running drivers. It is also possible to rename the old driver file, save the new file instead and reboot.

Elevated administrative rights must be explicitly activated to register the driver (run the executable using the “Run as administrator” context menu item in Windows Explorer).

For Windows 8 and later versions of the Windows family of operating systems, kernel-mode software must have a digital signature. The included driver binaries are not signed. To test it, you should press F8 during system boot and choose the Disable Driver Signature Enforcement option. For end-user software you have to obtain a Code Signing certificate and sign the driver.

See the Signing the drivers section for details about signing the drivers.

Supported platforms:

Windows 7 and higher x86/x64/ARM64