PCI-E RTL8126 - 5Gbit/s Windows 7 - 32 / 64 bit driver - exists?

[user57]

nice, important thing is to realize but

that KMDF driver use a engine called wdf

so the driver gets bond to that engine (sometimes engine is called "interface" its already into that name : WdfDeviceSetDevice"INTERFACE"StateEx) (what is probaly highly bond to windows 10)

there is an entire description how this engine works 

xp suppose to have "v 1.7" but the numbering goes different "v 1.33" means version 33 and 7 means like version 7

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/wdf/introduction-to-framework-objects

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/wdf/kmdf-version-history

the source code is said to be public too - but then somehow it use up windows 10 things again - so just trying to copy that part is not a complete source code

so to say the dependency walker as i wrote a little above is missing that - its similiar to dwrite.dll - dwrite is also a engine 

what means you cant just make a kernel extender - you would have to write that Wdf engine too (that what i tryed to point out)

we ran into that problem kinda often 

 

that shows how they want to bind it to windows 10, the hardware itself probaly dont need that engine like at all

what leaves us only a Wdf solution for now - what is hard to control upwards (as microsoft will keep writing at it with many people) - instead of having a independend solution

for now everything seems to be fine

there was a such question also with that LAV engine

[ruthan]

There are clearly people able to do amazing thing, but all these threads get pretty complicated, no simple finished package to download and BFU guide.
  I got lost by forwarded to some English forum, which seems to need some registration to read things, or some translations by Chrome are really bad.

Its the shame, because there would be much more users of these amazing creations.

 

 

[user57]

i get the trick

we have to understand a bit computer history here
in the past a driver controls its write/read/control over a driver (i also programmed a little here, not that much but i did)

that KMDF driver dont do that - yes right it dont

that is because instead of using the norms of talking the device 
it provides an ENGINE/INTERFACE - this time its called the Wdf engine

this goes very away from normal drivers

this "interface function" for example probaly holds (internal the norm how to talk to that device/hardware)
WdfDeviceSetDevice"INTERFACE"StateEx 

and thats the trick 
instead of providing a working code with the right norms (what is normally done)
it provides a function to do this (they are certainly a sum of these functions)

this is similiar to a h265 nvidia question ...
they actually dont provide a single line of the real code ...
instead they offer a so called "SDK" - what controls pre-functions (these are not doing the real thing !)
---
so one would have to gather the norms that these engines use - and then control the hardware (probaly faster too - engines are code to run through and if there are many (such as win10 have) it slows down)
 

[K4sum1]

  

On 4/6/2026 at 12:06 AM, canonkong said:

Realtek win10 drivers need KMDF 1.15.
KMDF1.15~1.19 port to win7 is not hard. We successfully made KMDF 1.15~KMDF 1.33 work on win7.
win10 usb driver also can work on win7.
WiFI6/6E and some WiFi7 also can work now, need to extand win7 ndis.sys to support wdi, need to port wdiwifi.sys from win10.
Here is the driver:https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/3-posts-for-extending-win7-on-new-hardwares.89805/

On 4/6/2026 at 12:47 AM, canonkong said:

Use IDA Pro to edit the KMDF 1,15~1.19 file:
DriverEntry: 48 to C3

Use "mov eax, 0C0000001h" to relace the unsupport IAT, jut need to fix  relace IoGetActivityIdIrp and PoFxRegisterDevice
For Extimer, find ExAllocateTimer, than make it don out use Extimer IAT, like jz  $LN10 to jmp   $LN10, it will use FxTimer::_FxTimerDpcThunk, not use FxTimer::_FxTimerExtCallbackThunk.
Than all unsupport IATs, just use a short support IAT to replace them use PETools, also can nop them because they will not be used. But for KeInitializeSpinLock only can use RtlRunOnceInitialize repalce it.

That's so cool, but I tried using IDA Pro before and I wasn't able to figure it out. Do you think you could mod it for me pls.

I also wish they would release that WiFi driver on the forum, I know someone that could benefit from it, and I have an AX201 sitting around with no use myself.

[K4sum1]

On 4/4/2026 at 6:29 PM, ruthan said:

WIndows XP are limited to 1.4Gb/s (170 MB/s) even with Intel 10Gbit card, no USB involved, its some design feature in system which is blocking more, someone would have to fix it, to enable more.. 

I searched, i could be because:
- no Receive Side Scaling (RSS) - so all is done on single core
- Lack of Hardware Offloading -  network card hardware is not use and all is calculating by CPU, i hope its not case of Intel drivers, but im not sure if XP supports all needed stuff to do it

But i also found that 1.4 Gbit could be just some XP connection speed reporting problem.. 

This didn't sound correct to me, so I did some testing with a 10G card that I know works with XP. Using locally hosted OpenSpeedTest to test local network speed.

That's certainly more than 1.4Gbit.

Also I'm not sure if it's the browser or what but these results are pretty low for being contained in my 10G network. Downloading files from my NAS with Filezilla I saw up to 600MiB/s which is the limit of the SATA SSD I have in the machine.

[j7n]

On 4/4/2026 at 8:08 PM, user57 said:

the calculation for speed is simple /8 /1024 (kb) / 1024 / (mb)
so to answer this one
1 Gigabit would represent 125 Megabyte/second
2,5 GBit would be 312,5 MByte/second 
ruhan only reached 160 MB/s what is far from 312,5 MB/s

Remember that serial line speeds use decimal prefixes and megabytes use binary prefixes (unless you are manufacturer of hard drives). So 1 Gbit is equal to 119.2 MiB/s not counting protocol overhead and TCP congestion control.

I am getting old, but I would consider this speed to be completely sufficient when accessing files remotely or even streaming the highest definition film. 1 Gbit can have very long cable runs. What is the maximum practical cable length for 5 Gbit?

Settings that could limit speed might be interrupt moderation in card's settings as well as TCP window sizes. Practical low overhead speed test can be done with FileZilla FTP Server without encryption.

Isn't it simpler to obtain an older network card?

[user57]

what exactly is that view ? a browser speed test ?
it show it as 1366 mbps what means megabits per second not megabyte per second, what are indeed are around ~1,4G (1,366)
however the other test has 2,46G

a browser might has also limitations, i would try to move a big file and look how long it actually takes
also hardware has its limitations, my HDD only offers 120 megabytes/second 170 mb/s would be above

that with that Wdf engine is making a good example how to ask for "install windows 10 please"

with LAV, dwrite, dx11 its kinda the same

they do not offer as said before the real thing

they offer PRE-functions - what are bond to windows 10 and so on
important to notice here is but there are other solutions (they just hidden in that engines functions)
they programmed probaly their entire driver like this
thus the "real functions or the "real way how this works" " is not visable

somebody to port an existing code like opensource still would have a lot to do 
he would have to understand how he can reinterprete that KMDF driver engine to a normal driver
if not he would have to read out what these function are really doing - also work - if not a little more work

so that being said - hopefully that pushes that into the right questioning and maybe lead to solutions

1,4 G is at least for me even a little to much even 50mbit what is 0,050G is good internet in my opinion
300 mbit still are only 0,3G just saying

[ruthan]

21 hours ago, K4sum1 said:

This didn't sound correct to me, so I did some testing with a 10G card that I know works with XP. Using locally hosted OpenSpeedTest to test local network speed.

Ok that is nice for upload, i saw slow speed, google a bit and gave up too early, or its maybe Intel X540-T2 Windows XP problem, but i really saw 1.4 Gbit as connection speed and in different OSes it was full 10 Gbit.
 I saw sometimes higher speed for short moment but its usually some cache or bug in speed indicator, it is showing speed constantly during files copying it works, i was using Ramdisk to Ramdisk testing.

Im still confused about that Realtek USB driver for XP, does it exists in some package to download, or CanonKong point as to some file to replace vanilla driver package, or we have just some idea how develop driver?

[K4sum1]

On 4/8/2026 at 11:43 AM, j7n said:

I am getting old, but I would consider this speed to be completely sufficient when accessing files remotely or even streaming the highest definition film. 1 Gbit can have very long cable runs. What is the maximum practical cable length for 5 Gbit?

Actually according to Wikipedia it's the same as 1Gbit for the same type of Cat 5e cable. For 10G, it's half the distance for Cat 6, but the same distance as 1/2.5/5 for Cat 6e. I've run 10G over Cat 5e for shorter ~25ft runs and have had no issue before.

On 4/8/2026 at 11:43 AM, j7n said:

Isn't it simpler to obtain an older network card?

I guess it could be, however if you want high performance plus working ASPM and stuff, I don't know of any other option.

On 4/8/2026 at 5:30 PM, user57 said:

what exactly is that view ? a browser speed test ?

Of sorts, something that I can locally host on my own network since my connection to the world is only a gigabit. (It feels weird to call that just only when so many people have a lot less, however idk how else to word it)

I ran that inside a Linux VM on my PC and pointed the browser to it and ran it. iperf3 would be better, but I wasn't able to find a release that ran on (stock) XP, and I didn't feel like recompiling it for XP just to run the test. Although I might do that soon just to see the max theoretical.

On 4/8/2026 at 5:30 PM, user57 said:

a browser might has also limitations, i would try to move a big file and look how long it actually takes

On 4/8/2026 at 12:40 AM, K4sum1 said:

Also I'm not sure if it's the browser or what but these results are pretty low for being contained in my 10G network. Downloading files from my NAS with Filezilla I saw up to 600MiB/s which is the limit of the SATA SSD I have in the machine.

 

On 4/8/2026 at 10:33 PM, ruthan said:

Ok that is nice for upload, i saw slow speed, google a bit and gave up too early, or its maybe Intel X540-T2 Windows XP problem, but i really saw 1.4 Gbit as connection speed and in different OSes it was full 10 Gbit.

I think I have a X540-T2 somewhere. Will have to dig for it, but I could do a test and compare them. Good opportunity to bother with compiling iperf3 too.

[canonkong]

We can get the kmdf1.31, wdiwifi, ndis, intel wifi6/7divers here.
https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/3-posts-for-extending-win7-on-new-hardwares.89805/#post-1910425

[ruthan]

8 hours ago, canonkong said:

We can get the kmdf1.31, wdiwifi, ndis, intel wifi6/7divers here.
https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/3-posts-for-extending-win7-on-new-hardwares.89805/#post-1910425

I tried to download it (first link), there is password for download link, its working fine, but 7zip needs different password, in the note is password, not changed, i searched link for passwords, tried all of them, but nothing seems to be working.

[ED_Sln]

16 hours ago, ruthan said:

I tried to download it (first link), there is password for download link, its working fine, but 7zip needs different password, in the note is password, not changed, i searched link for passwords, tried all of them, but nothing seems to be working.

Archive password: C118F50D-391D-45F4-B3D3-11BC931AA56D