[SOLVED] ndiswrapper on natively unsupported new RTL8723DE wireless card - ndiswrapper fails to load driver

I have a new model of wireless module from Realtek - RTL8723DE in an HP 15-BS576TX laptop (2017 June launched) which is not yet supported natively in Linux. The driver may be available in another few months as per rtlwifi maintainer as he awaits Realtek to release sources.
So, I thought of trying luck with ndiswrapper for this RTL8723DE WiFi module, though, ndiswrapper project appears to be rather stagnant.


I can load ndiswrapper and even it lists netwrtlane as installed. But, Wireless module is not detected and configured, neither seems to be working with the Windows 7 64-bit driver that I used with ndiswrapper.
The driver is provided by HP for Windows 7/8/8.1/10 versions. I used Win 7 64-bit driver after extracting the executable. I even made sure to copy all the available files to be inside a single folder, in case, if that helped. Ndiswrapper says driver is installed.

:~$ ndiswrapper -l netrtwlane  :  driver installed         device (10EC:D723) present

But, the driver is not loading - the syslog is here: http://pasted.co/a293d2d1

kernel: [ 1755.786026] ndiswrapper (load_sys_files:200): couldn't prepare driver 'netrtwlane' kernel: [ 1755.786509] ndiswrapper (load_wrap_driver:103): couldn't load driver netrtwlane; check system log for messages from 'loadndisdriver' kernel: [       1755.786577] usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

Besides, the syslog shows "unknown symbol: NDIS.SYS" "unknown symbol: WDFLDR.SYS".
Is this Windows 7 driver has any possibility to work with ndiswrapper?
I checked the realtek page and for their Windows drivers, it is written that:

RTL8723BE/RTL8821AE/RTL8822BE/RTL8821CE/RTL8723DE: WLAN/Bluetooth combo solutions, need to install WLAN and Bluetooth drivers

I'm on Ubuntu 17.10 with Kernel version: 4.13.0-17-generic .

As far as I know ndiswrapper still only works with XP drivers and is basically obsolete.

Think this may still be true. "Ubuntu comes with the necessary ndiswrapper module pre-installed, but it needs the ndiswrapper-utils package to get it working"
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...er/Ndiswrapper

But the work on ndiswrapper was never completed. It was a means to run really any driver. Takes a lot of work.

Anyway you posted to many sites on this.


https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new/issues/267

Originally Posted by jefro Think this may still be true. "Ubuntu comes with the necessary ndiswrapper module pre-installed, but it needs the ndiswrapper-utils package to get it working" https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...er/Ndiswrapper But the work on ndiswrapper was never completed. It was a means to run really any driver. Takes a lot of work. Anyway you posted to many sites on this. https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new/issues/267

As you may have guessed it, there seems to be very less help available now, as ndiswrapper appear to be a dead project now. But, like in this case, with newer wireless cards, ndiswrapper still has significance. I hope they, at least should get it to work with Win7/Win8/8.1 drivers.

Realtek hopefully will release the drivers in coming months, as is written by rtlwifi maintainer Larry Fingers.

The link I posted seemed to suggest that someone will release it.

Well, at last an unofficial driver is made available. Thanks to "smlinux" whoever he/she is.

https://github.com/smlinux/rtl8723de

git clone or download the source as zip and extract, make and sudo make install, sudo modprobe 8723de and voila! WiFi worked for the first time, since I bought this new laptop.