DDI Compliance Checking and other settings in Driver Verifier

Hello everyone.

I have been doing some research into how to troubleshoot blue screens and crashes caused by non-Windows drivers (e.g. Realtek Audio) using Driver Verifier. My issue is that I cannot find any consensus (evidence) for the use of "DDI Compliance Checking" and "DDI Compliance Checking (Additional)". Some tutorials, say to include one of these settings, but not the other, some say to use them in Windows 11, but not in Windows 10 - but nobody seems to know why?

Does anyone have first hand experience and an understanding of these settings? Any first hand insights would be appreciated.

Welcome.

This is a niche question. Sometimes it’s helpful to go straight to something like ChatGPT which will tell you the following (Summarised)

Use "DDI Compliance Checking" for validating drivers on both Windows 10 and 11.
Use "DDI Compliance Checking (Additional)" only on Windows 11 or when dealing with newer drivers, and expect potential false positives on older drivers.

if you want more detail, copy your first post into ChatGPT for a comprehensive reply.

That is the problem, I cannot find any reasoning as to the use of these settings. My hope was to find someone with first-hand knowledge on the subject. ChatGPT overviews content from other websites, it doesn't understand the actual question - although it tries its best!

My understanding is that modern drivers are more likely to be DDI compliant and can therefor be tested using both settings DDI Compliance Checking settings. So, DDI Compliance Checking can be used on Windows 10 and 11, it's just a gamble as to whether Driver Verifier generates false positives with non-DDI compliant drivers. This is my reasoning; however, I cannot find any authoritative sources to back this up.

Also, non-DDI compliance is not necessarily relevant to identifying crashing drivers.

I hope I have this right! Either way, thanks for your reply.