How to get a handle to a device driver returned by device manager?

Q:

Hi, all.

I have a question that is if a driver was loaded by calling ActivateDevice() 
in device manager, and then I want to unload it in my app by calling 
DeActivateDevice(), how to get the handle needed by DeActivateDevice()?

Because DeActivateDevice() needs a handle as it's parameter, but it is 
device manager not me who loaded that driver, I do not know how to get that 
handle.

Anyone can hlep me? Thanks very much!
Lee

A1:

There is no documented and supported way to do that.  If the device manager 
loaded the driver, then it is the device manager who should unload it.

Why do you want to do this?  Maybe you should leave it to your app to call 
ActivateDeviceEx() instead of having the device manager do it for your app.

-- 
Bruce Eitman (eMVP)
Senior Engineer
beitman AT applieddata DOT net

Applied Data Systems
 www.applieddata.net
An ISO 9001:2000 Registered Company
Microsoft WEP Gold-level Member

A2:

have a look at the FindFirstDevice and FindNextDevice.
You should be able to enumerate the loaded device drivers and find the one 
you look after

HTH

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Anthony Pellerin
ADENEO (ADESET)
Windows Embedded Consultant
<apellerin AT adeneo DOT adetelgroup DOT com>
http://www.adeneo.adetelgroup.com
Tél  : +33 (0)4.72.18.57.77
Fax : +33 (0)4.72.18.57.78

A3:

As Bruce told you there is no documented and supported way to do that.

PB help states "Only Device Manager should access the Active key 
for read or write access. You can indirectly access the Active key through a 
parameter to a device driver's initialization function"

The Device Manager stores the handle returned by ActivateDevice
under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Drivers/Active/nn registry key corresponding 
to your driver; you can retrieve such a key calling OpenDeviceKey in your 
XXX_Init driver funcion. 

Anyway you should not do it...

A4:

Actually in V5.0 there IS a documented way to do that. However, it's still 
dangerous to do in MOST (but not all) situations. If you loaded the driver 
with an application that is no longer running then you can deactivate it 
safely. This is useful in debugging the driver that will otherwise be loaded 
from the "built-in" key. However, if the driver was loaded by a bus 
driver/enumerator then the bus driver needs to do the unload; otherwise 
there will, at best, be a memory leak in the bus driver as it maintains 
resources for all the drivers it loads.

How about explaining a bit about WHY you think you need to do this?

-- 
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com

A5:

"So I want to unload the usb function driver in my oempoweroff() and load it
in my OemPowerOn() to solve this problem. Does this make sense?"

Uhm, no. If you'd just said that from the beginning we'd have saved some 
time. You can't load/unload the drivers in the OEMPowerOff() handler 
(There's no such thing as OEMPowerOn() unless your BSP created one for some 
reason.)

You can have a driver that receives the power manager notifications and 
unloads and reloads the USB function driver on resume - but honestly that's 
a hack - fix your function driver to work correctly and the whole issue is 
moot.

-- 
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com

A6:

Because the OS is effectively shut down by the time it gets there. The 
scheduler is already stopped and the only thing you can do there is return 
or turn off power and suspend the hardware. You cannot call ANY of the WIN32 
APIs in that context.

-- 
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com