Enable/Disable Hardware in Windows 2000 with VB?

[Talismaniac]

I am looking for a way to disable one piece of hardware (digital pad) from a Windows 2000 machine. This pad is used for two different CAD programs, one requires special drivers from the pad and the other won't work with the drivers.

I would like to make a program in Visual Basic that will toggle the hardware enabled or disabled depending on what CAD program is being used.

Any know of some sample code or modules to do this or something similar enough I can make it work?


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[Tonker]

I'm afraid I don't know very much about win2k. I know in NT4 you can use netstart or netstop from the command prompt to start and stop devices. You can probably make a system call in VB to invoke these if they work in 2k.

You might also try the Operating System forum. They might have some ideas.

Good luck,

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[Talismaniac]

Thanks Tonker, that works for services, is it possible to get to the device manager from the net command? Or can I start and stop devices using services?

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<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1" FACE="Verdana, Arial">This message has been edited by Talismaniac on May 25, 2001 at 07:46 AM</font>

[Tonker]

I think it is possible. We do it here when we need to restart the drivers for our PCMCIA Card Readers. Here is an example of the batch file I have to do that. LunaCR is the driver that I want to stop.

net stop LunaCR
net start LunaCR

I don't actually know how to make an operating system call in VB, but how hard can it be, right? http://www.helpfromtechs.com/ubb/smilies/wink.gif

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[Talismaniac]

I might be missing something but I think that will only work if the device is dependent on a service.

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[Tonker]

You could be right. I've never really played with device drivers much. You might want to see if you can find the name of the driver in devices under control panel, then see if net stop and net start work on them.

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[Talismaniac]

I did, it doesn't.

I haven't been able to find anything on the internet for this either. It doesn't seem like it would be all that uncommon of a task.

Anyway, thanks for the help!

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[Talismaniac]

Some one from another board showed me a way using Send Keys. I have been able to make it work in a VB EXE.

I have one more question though, is there a way to test if the device is enabled first?

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run "devmgmt.msc"
While WshShell.AppActivate("Device Manager") = False
Wend
WshShell.AppActivate "Device Manager"
WshShell.SendKeys "{Tab}"
WshShell.SendKeys "Mice"
WshShell.SendKeys "{Right}"
WshShell.SendKeys "{Down}"
WshShell.SendKeys "+{F10}"
WshShell.SendKeys "D"
WshShell.SendKeys "%Y"
WshShell.SendKeys "%{F4}"

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