Announcing the availability of a standalone legacy 1394 OHCI (FireWire) package

By Koichi Hirao [MSFT]

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of a standalone legacy 1394 OHCI (FireWire) package for Windows 8/8.1.

Starting with Windows 7, we’ve been providing native support for a 1394 driver stack that is based on the Windows Driver Framework (WDF).  And this driver stack supports the legacy 1394 (aka 1394a) and 1394b interfaces.

With the introduction of this new standalone WDF-based 1394 driver, we decided to remove native support for the legacy 1394 stack from Windows 8.

We’ve been monitoring Answers Forum very closely. The feedback from our customers, shows that some 1394 peripherals are not working as effectively on 1394b systems, and this has led to the desire to publish the standalone legacy 1394 driver.

You sent us feedback and we listened.

Package information:

• The driver is available for both x86/x64 platforms.


• Please follow the manual installation steps in the KB 2970191


• The driver is only intended to work with legacy 1394 host controllers so you will experience lower transfer data rates, compared with 1394b.


• The driver is intended for customers who experience compatibility issues with 1394 peripherals on 1394b systems. If you are not experiencing any issues, you should continue to use inbox drivers provided in Windows 8.


• Customers who upgrade to a newer OS version in the future will be required to reinstall this standalone driver package.

Please help us by responding to this blog post, to let us know whether or not our suggestions worked for your setup.