Re: Cheap USB device that never autoplays or asks for driver
- From: Kosta <kosta.koeman@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:24:22 -0700 (PDT)
On Sep 25, 8:41 am, eric selk <eselk2...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm in search of a cheap and easily available (I need to start with
small quantities) USB device. Pretty much anything small that can be
plugged in to a USB port. I want something that will cause Windows to
give the least amount of feedback possible when plugged in, not
something that Windows might try to autoplay, and for sure not
something that Windows will ask the user to install a driver for.
The purpose would be for my software which is already installed and
running on the PC to query the device for the unique serial number. I
don't need to use the device for anything else, just the serial
number.
I have another program that uses flash drives for this, and I can
query the serial number fine (serial number and product name/vendor
name set by the OEM). For that product we like the autoplay/autorun
features because we use that for our software install, and then we
unmount the volume so that it doesn't autorun in the future. For this
product we will have nothing on the device, and will only be using the
serial number. I know I could cancel the autoplay (although I'm not
sure how I could cancel just for our device and not other flash drives
the user may have), and after the first time I can unmount the volume
that Windows assigns so that it doesn't autoplay in the future... but
ideally this device would never autoplay (without me breaking other
USB autoplay), and wouldn't show up as a drive or even have any
storage space on it (would think it would be cheaper).
I've seen various "dongles" and "smart card" devices that people are
selling for copy protection, but they are a combined software and
hardware solution, or are more expensive than plain flash drives, and
we aren't using this for copy protection or login/security. It
doesn't need to be "secure", I can't really say exactly what our idea
is, but it isn't anything related to security or copy protection.
We currently pay about $5 each for the flash drives, so anything in
that range or cheaper would work, especially if the user experience
was better (no autoplay). I think a HID device would be ideal, but it
needs to be small/generic, not something like an actual mouse or
keyboard... something that looks like a flash drive would be ideal.
Hi Eric,
Would you prefer free? (in terms of cost, not time) There is always
using DSF provided in the WDK. There are some great examples there,
but of course, there will be some significant work on your part.
Beauty is, you can make anything you want and make it do anything you
want.
DSF is great for a number of purposes, including simulating a device
that is not yet available and also forcing various conditions to test
out your driver.
Hope this helps,
Kosta
.
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