This is a post to assist customers with known bigger issues or workarounds, in the interest of remaining transparent on this project and unblocking customers and companies. Please see links below to our Discord server for further discussion and workarounds.<\/p>\n
Updated April 30, 2026.<\/p>\n
Main Windows MIDI Services Announcement blog post<\/a><\/p>\n The issues and workarounds here apply only to the new Windows MIDI Services rollout in Windows 11 retail 24h2, 25h2, and 26h1. This does not apply to older versions of Windows. Insider builds get different releases on a different schedule so this information may or may not apply to a Windows Insider Canary\/Dev\/Beta release.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We performed multiple years of testing with customers, partners, and our own equipment over the development cycle for Windows MIDI Services, but some bugs have made it through, as is known to happen with software development. We’re working on them in priority order, but I wanted to ensure the most impactful ones have more detail here.<\/p>\n Full issue list and updates for bugs, feature requests, and more may be found on our GitHub Repo<\/a><\/p>\n For support, questions, and workarounds, please join our Discord Server<\/a>. That is the best place for us to help you out, and has the most up-to-date info.<\/p>\n If you are using CFR (Controlled Feature Rollout)-disabling tools like the vive tool or the “disable MIDI 2.0” button in an app like VDJ, that will stop working at the end of April when the January release of Windows MIDI Services comes out of CFR. Each bug fix since January has been released as a CFR at the end of each month. Uninstalling those updates generally results in uninstalling the bug fixes and resulting in a worse or completely broken MIDI experience.<\/strong> So please do not uninstall updates.<\/p>\n If you are stuck, we have workarounds or fixes for all the major issues available on the Discord server above. However, for those to work, you will need to be up to date with your Windows updates.<\/p>\n This fix has started rolling out today, April 30, via the 30 day CFR process.<\/p>\n This fix has started rolling out today, April 30, via the 30 day CFR process.<\/p>\n This fix has started rolling out today, April 30, via the 30 day CFR process.<\/p>\n This fix has started rolling out today, April 30, via the 30 day CFR process.<\/p>\n Status: DirectMusic is not supported by design. Please see GitHub issue 962<\/a><\/p>\n The DirectMusic API was deprecated with Windows Vista 20 years ago. The only reason it has worked since then, is because our MIDI stack in Windows has had no real changes in that time. There are very few devices out there which used custom drivers using the DirectMusic API and driver model, but some of the older Hercules devices do.<\/p>\n We won’t be able to write this ourselves, but because the Windows MIDI Services stack is open source, we’d be willing to accept a PR from someone who wants to write a Windows MIDI Services transport that can talk to these devices. We want to be as backward compatible as possible and support as many devices as possible.<\/p>\n To also better handle situations like this, we will ship the ability to revert back to the old MIDI stack starting at the end of June. That won’t receive any other updates, and won’t have access to the new transports or tools, but will be able to support these very old devices. We can’t promise that this option will always be available in the years to come.<\/p>\n Known to impact: – DJ Console Mk2 – DJ Console Mk4 – DJ Console Rmx – DJ Console 4-Mx – DJ 4Set – DJ Control Steel – DJ Control MP3 -DJ Control MP3 e2 \/ MP3 LE \/ Glow<\/p>\n Status: By design, but these USB devices will work if you use our in-box drivers. There is no plan to change this behavior.<\/p>\n When an old-style KORG USB driver is included in the registry, our backwards-compatibility code tries to load it. This conflict with the MIDI service also loading the USB device. This may cause the device to not appear, or in some cases, apps using MIDI to take a very long time to list devices, appearing to hang. Luckily, there’s very little need for those old-style drivers anymore as the new stack is fully multi-client and supports class-compliant USB MIDI devices.<\/p>\n Korg has issued news bulletins<\/a> explaining that their USB drivers are no longer required and are not compatible with the new MIDI stack.<\/p>\n You can continue to use the KORG BLE driver, but note that the uninstallers\/installers can mess up registry entries. Join the Discord Server for help if you run into this. In addition, the MIDI Settings app, as of Release Candidate 4 (rc4) includes a one-button fix for registry corruption.<\/p>\n Completely uninstall and remove the driver. This can be tricky with the Korg drivers in-particular because they tend to cause issues in the registry. We have complete instructions on our Discord Server<\/a> in the #workarounds-and-instructions channel.<\/p>\n These are the only required registry entries for Windows MIDI Services<\/a>.<\/p>\n Status: This can be caused by driver uninstallers\/reordering tools. Instructions below on how to fix this.<\/p>\n We will eventually have a first-class BLE MIDI 1.0 transport in Windows MIDI Services. Today, you can continue to use the Korg driver for BLE MIDI (we do not recommend using their drivers for USB MIDI as those conflict with the USB MIDI Support in the MIDI Service).<\/p>\n Because the Korg BLE MIDI driver is an older style WinMM driver, it needs to be loaded in addition to the new Windows MIDI Services wdmaud2.drv. Because of this, it will not appear in any of the tools provided with Windows MIDI Services and will not be multi-client.<\/p>\n After installing the latest Korg BLE MIDI driver, the registry should have the following entries<\/p>\n Open regedit and paste this location into the address bar at the top of the app<\/p>\n You should see these entries:<\/p>\n Here’s the explanation of what those entries do<\/p>\n With those entries in place, all your devices should be working with 64 bit apps (we have on Discord more information for 32 bit apps like MIDI-OX). There should be no other Korg .drv files in that list. Also note that “midi0” is not a valid entry. That entry needs to be named “midi”.<\/p>\n Do not use the Korg Driver Uninstaller or any other tool which works to change the ordering of Please do not comment on this post with issues\/bugs\/questions\/complaints.<\/strong><\/p>\n Questions\/Discussion, and for customers without access to GitHub, issue reporting: https:\/\/aka.ms\/mididiscord<\/a> . Be sure to read the post in \n
Important Note<\/h1>\n
Issues<\/h1>\n
Issue: inMusic-branded companies’ drivers lock up the MIDI Service<\/h2>\n
Bug: Dynamic ports (loopMIDI, loopBE, virtualTE \/ teVirtualMIDI \/ rtpMIDI \/ NI Service) are not always visible.<\/h2>\n
Bug: WinRT MIDI 1.0 Timestamps are in the future, so no messages received.<\/h2>\n
Issue: Some apps may connect to the wrong device if you have multiple identical MIDI devices with the same names<\/h2>\n
Issue: Old Hercules brand controllers using DirectMusic drivers are not compatible with Windows MIDI Services.<\/h2>\n
General Issues<\/h1>\n
Issue: Korg USB devices using a .DRV winmm-style driver are not recognized<\/h2>\n
Fix<\/h3>\n
Issue: Korg devices using the Korg BLE driver may not show up.<\/h2>\n
Instructions<\/h3>\n
Computer\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\Drivers32<\/code><\/p>\n\n
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Other Important Notes<\/h1>\n
midi<\/code>…midi9<\/code> entries in the registry. Windows MIDI Services requires only that midi<\/code> is set to wdmaud.drv<\/code> and midi1<\/code> is set to wdmaud2.drv<\/code>. If those two entries are not present, Windows MIDI Services will not work on your system. The SDK runtime and tools includes a tool midifixreg<\/code> which will ensure these two settings exist, in case you’ve already run one of these tools on your system.<\/p>\nHow to File Bugs or Report Issues<\/h1>\n
#start-here<\/code> that the invite lands you on.<\/p>\n