Restarting a USB device

[ChrisL]

What I want to do is to restart a stopped USB device.

The thing is that a USB card reader occasionally drops out and the drive letters dissapear.

What I would like to do is to be able to restart the device, or force windows to rescan the hardware.

If I stop the device manually I have this status in device manager....

Windows cannot use this hardware device because it has been prepared for "safe removal", but it has not been removed from the computer.

Telling device manager to rescan for devices doesn't work.

Do any of you clever people know of a call that can be made to force windows to restart the device?

Thanks

[Bert]

Larry,

GOOD FIND! That will come in handy!

[ChrisL]

devcon

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=311272

also, I am researching another possibility...

Lar.

Thanks Larry... can't wait for your other possibility

[ChrisL]

I gave up on setupapi.dll + GUID + PVOID hell... This can be done without devcon.exe if you are brave enough to learn setupapi.dll.

Lar.

Well thanks for looking..

This is what I have so far using Devcon which seems to work OK

Fileinstall ("Devcon.exe", @tempdir & "\Devcon.exe",1)

$iniFile = "DriveMonitor.ini"

$DriveList= IniReadSection($iniFile,"MonitorDrives") 

While 1
    If NOT DrivesAreOK() then   
        RunWait (@tempdir & "\Devcon restart USB\ROOT*", @tempdir, @sw_hide)
    EndIf
    
    Sleep (1000 * 60);checks once a minute
WEnd

Func DrivesAreOK()
    Local $dOK = 1
    For $i = 1 to Ubound ($DriveList) -1
        If DriveStatus($DriveList[$i][1] & ":") = "INVALID" then $dOK = 0
    Next
    Return $dOK 
EndFunc

The ini file looks like this

[MonitorDrives]
1=F
2=G
3=H
4=I
5=J
6=K