How to select preferred device out of 2 similar devices

NTDEV
1

Hi all,

Is there any way to select preferred device out of any 2 similar devices?

I believe OS chooses the which ever is first loaded out of 2 devices. Is it correct?

Anybody has new ideas or suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
DV.

2

Here are a couple of (Microsoft) documents that describe the selection process. The first is an introduction straight from the MSDN. The second is more specific information about how drivers are ranked. Don sent out a link a couple of months ago to a very specific document about this subject; the second link may or may not be that; I don’t recall.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/7/af7777e5-7dcd-4800-8a0a-b18336565f5b/pnp-driver.doc

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791096.aspx

Good luck,

mm

3

Your question is too vague. What types of devices? The application which opens the device owns the policy. For instance, all keyboards and mice are opened by the input subsystem regardless of arrival order or number. COM ports are typically opened in sequence to probe the other end or by hard coded name. It all depends on what device type you are asking about

d

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 12:22 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] How to select preferred device out of 2 similar devices

Hi all,

Is there any way to select preferred device out of any 2 similar devices?

I believe OS chooses the which ever is first loaded out of 2 devices. Is it correct?

Anybody has new ideas or suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
DV.

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4

Sorry, for the confusion…

OK. this is about 2 IR (infrared devices for MCE application) devices. after the first IR device is loaded, if we add second IR device to the system then the first will be overrided by the second IR device and become the preferred device.

Let us say, I want to keep the first one as is, what should I do?

Both IR devices use class drivers.

Thanks
DV

5

Who defines “preferred”? MC itself or some control panel applet?

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 1:01 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] How to select preferred device out of 2 similar devices

Sorry, for the confusion…

OK. this is about 2 IR (infrared devices for MCE application) devices. after the first IR device is loaded, if we add second IR device to the system then the first will be overrided by the second IR device and become the preferred device.

Let us say, I want to keep the first one as is, what should I do?

Both IR devices use class drivers.

Thanks
DV

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6

Hi Doron,

Thanks for the reply. I don’t think there is any control panel applet as of now for IR devices. I believe it is the MC that picks up as prefered. Correct me if I am wrong.

Suppose, if we connect 2 CIR devices, how would MC applicaton would work? Can it operate based on both remote keys?

TIA,
DV.

7

The last CIR device plugged in becomes the primary device as per our tests using CIR test suite. There is a development applet available to switch which one is the master, but there is no end-user interface in MCE or similar to make this easy for them.

added more information.

tia,
DV

8

I don’t know. The reason I ask is that sometimes a ranking is documented if it is exposed in the UI. What I think you are seeing in incidental behavior that is internal to MC and I don’t know MC enough to know if this is by design/unintentional/documented/controllable behavior.

d

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 1:37 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] How to select preferred device out of 2 similar devices

Hi Doron,

Thanks for the reply. I don’t think there is any control panel applet as of now for IR devices. I believe it is the MC that picks up as prefered. Correct me if I am wrong.

Suppose, if we connect 2 CIR devices, how would MC applicaton would work? Can it operate based on both remote keys?

TIA,
DV.

NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

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