Dynamic Friendly Naming

When multiple NICs (of the same type) are installed on a machine the second one installed gets “#X” appended to the name in Device Manager. Is this a result of the operating system or the driver alone. I am trying to incorporate similar behaviour in my device’s except that the name will have a serial number (extracted from the device upon startup) instead of just a incremented number.

I have looked at using DeviceDesc and FriendlyName however my attempts at modifying them during runtime have failed. I could be doing it incorrectly.

Any advise you help greatly.
Thanks, Chris

I was just going to post a similar question. Here’s my situation.

My NICs are USB devices that have have individual USB serial number strings.

Each device has a instance ID based on the HW ID and the USB serial number.
An installation entry in my setupapi.log looks like

@ 17:29:46.531 : Doing copy-only install of
USB\VID_0D14&PID_0009\00:10:E2:FF:00:B4

The last six entries, separated by “:” are my MAC address which also serves
conviently as my USB serial number string.

I seem to get entries in Device Manager which look like what you described
when I install a device with a different serial number than the previously
installed device. This is for the situation when I only have one device
attached, but previously have had others attached. However, these are
development units. I’ve only come to this conclusion lately and I haven’t
access to multiple units with different S/Ns to test my theory. When I get
back to the lab next week I’ll let you know if I find out.

This may also be true for multiple units simultaneously installed.

Good luck,

Marc Reinig
System Solutions

“Chris Dore” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
When multiple NICs (of the same type) are installed on a machine the second
one installed gets “#X” appended to the name in Device Manager. Is this a
result of the operating system or the driver alone. I am trying to
incorporate similar behaviour in my device’s except that the name will have
a serial number (extracted from the device upon startup) instead of just a
incremented number.

I have looked at using DeviceDesc and FriendlyName however my attempts at
modifying them during runtime have failed. I could be doing it incorrectly.

If you have a device with a unique ID (uniqueness is determined by each
bus, for USB it’s a serial number string), when you move the device from
port to port, the OS can recognize that it was the previous device
instance in the previous slot and no install is needed (ie, the same
device node is used). If your usb devices does NOT have a serial
number, you get a new device instnace for every port you plug it into.

D

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no
rights.

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Reinig [mailto:xxxxx@nowwhere.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 12:14 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Re: Dynamic Friendly Naming

I was just going to post a similar question. Here’s my situation.

My NICs are USB devices that have have individual USB serial number
strings.

Each device has a instance ID based on the HW ID and the USB serial
number. An installation entry in my setupapi.log looks like

@ 17:29:46.531 : Doing copy-only install of
USB\VID_0D14&PID_0009\00:10:E2:FF:00:B4

The last six entries, separated by “:” are my MAC address which also
serves conviently as my USB serial number string.

I seem to get entries in Device Manager which look like what you
described when I install a device with a different serial number than
the previously installed device. This is for the situation when I only
have one device attached, but previously have had others attached.
However, these are development units. I’ve only come to this conclusion
lately and I haven’t access to multiple units with different S/Ns to
test my theory. When I get back to the lab next week I’ll let you know
if I find out.

This may also be true for multiple units simultaneously installed.

Good luck,

Marc Reinig
System Solutions

“Chris Dore” wrote in message
news:xxxxx@ntdev… When multiple NICs (of the same type) are installed
on a machine the second one installed gets “#X” appended to the name in
Device Manager. Is this a result of the operating system or the driver
alone. I am trying to incorporate similar behaviour in my device’s
except that the name will have a serial number (extracted from the
device upon startup) instead of just a incremented number.

I have looked at using DeviceDesc and FriendlyName however my attempts
at modifying them during runtime have failed. I could be doing it
incorrectly.


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Here’s a bit more info on what I am trying to do.

When more than one of my USB devices are plugged in the names that appear in device manager, and the safe remove thing, are identical. This causes some confusion when you want to remove (or whatever) one of them using one of these “utilities”. I want to embed the serial number that is on the USB device into the displayed name so that users can easily and quickly relate one of the devices to the correct one displayed in device manager/safe remove.

…Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Dore
To: NT Developers Interest List
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 1:51 PM
Subject: [ntdev] Dynamic Friendly Naming

When multiple NICs (of the same type) are installed on a machine the second one installed gets “#X” appended to the name in Device Manager. Is this a result of the operating system or the driver alone. I am trying to incorporate similar behaviour in my device’s except that the name will have a serial number (extracted from the device upon startup) instead of just a incremented number.

I have looked at using DeviceDesc and FriendlyName however my attempts at modifying them during runtime have failed. I could be doing it incorrectly.

Any advise you help greatly.
Thanks, Chris


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To unsubscribe send a blank email to %%email.unsub%%

My USB device is similar, but it updates the USB string descriptor to hold
a serial number at boot up. Windows sees this descriptor and incorporates
it into a device descriptor, including a symbolic link that apps can
attach to. This all happens in the bus driver, I didn’t have to mod my
driver’s AddDevice function.