Windows: how to spawn threads from (NDIS) kernel driver?

Question

Which function is recommended to spawn a new thread within NDIS5/6 context? Looking for something that is guaranteed to work at IRQL=PASSIVE (e.g. no bsods out of nothing); by a quick examination of ndis.h contents, found nothing.

Also, it is planned to use a newly spawned thread for calling upon NdisFreeMemory* family, will it be causing any problems to free allocated, but unused memory from a different thread?

Answer 1

Threading is outside the scope of NDIS. If you need to start a new thread, use the standard kernel routines (like PsCreateSystemThread). Note that usually timers and work items are sufficicent for most miniport needs. It is unusual for an NDIS miniport to create its own thread, although I suppose there are valid cases where it might be a fair design.

It is ok to allocate memory on one thread and free it on another.