Plug & Play event detection in windows xp

microsoft.public.dotnet.framework

9 Aug 2006 8:01 PM

sturnfie@gmail.com

I am attempting to write an application that forces a USB device
through all possilble (statically known) enumeration modes. My
approach is as follows:

1. Use WMI to pull a collection of all currently attached USB devices
and scan for specific vendor and product id combinations (this tells me
the current mode the device is in).

2. Run arbitrary code while in each specific mode.
3. Force re-enumeration (device side, Windows just sees a disconnect
and then a reconnect of a different device)

4. Watch for the PnP event generated when Windows sees a new device
attached
5. Capture event before it gets to the "Found New Hardware Wizard"
6. Install the device
7. Repeat to 2

I am having trouble with steps #4 - #6. Currently, Windows always asks
me to direct it to the drivers it should use to install. I want to
make this program completely automated, with the only user interaction
coming from plugging the device in initially and executing a binary.

Can someone point me in the direction I should look for a) what events
I need to catch and b) how to properly catch them? How about how to
manually install the device?

I have some ideas on how to accomplish this. The first is to have a
static folder with the inf files needed for installation, and
pre-pending this path to the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DevicePath
so Windows PnP will immediately find the required driver and will
automagically install it for me.

The 2nd I find rather nasty, and involves hooking into the "Found New
Hardware Wizard" window, then generating user input to go through the
dialouge.

There has to be a cleaner way that is less likely to break things or
otherwise make assumptions about a user's system.

--
lucas