How to get "FriendlyName" of a Device ContainerID (SPDRP_BASE_CONTAINERID)

Question

I want to get the "FriendlyName" of a device containerID.

For example, when you open Device Manager, View => Devices By Container, each container has a friendly name. I can get the container GUID, but do not know how to get the friendly name. In the picture below, you can see the "Logitech Unifying Receiver" container name that contains all the HID devices.

To get the Container ID GUID to list all associated devices, i'm using SetupDi

eg:

Guid guid = Guid.Empty;  
IntPtr infoList = SetupDiGetClassDevs(ref guid, null, IntPtr.Zero, DIGCF_PRESENT | DIGCF_ALLCLASSES);  
  
for (uint i = 0; SetupDiEnumDeviceInfo(infoList, i, out spDevInfo); i++)  
{  
    if (SetupDiGetDeviceRegistryPropertyW(infoList, ref spDevInfo,   
SPDRP_BASE_CONTAINERID, out _, sb, BUFSIZE, out _))  
    {  
          dev.ContainerId = sb.ToString();  
     }  
}  

dev.ContainerId will now be a unique GUID.

Using this containerid, I'm able to group all the devices that belong to this container. I cannot find how to retreive the friendly name of this container (such as the "Logitech Unifying Receiver")

Answer 1

In PnP's object model, 1 device container object can contain 1...n devnode objects. The way to reference the container object is the container ID property on the devnode. The next question is how to discover the container object. You can't with the old SetupDi APIs. You can with either the Winodws.Devices.Enumeration WinRT API or DevQuery C-style API. Winodws.Devices.Enumeration is built on top of DevQuery.

Here is the sample for Windows.Devices.Enumeration:
https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-universal-samples/tree/master/Samples/DeviceEnumerationAndPairing

The basic idea of the API is you declaratively ask for what you want upfront.
Like: I want

• device container objects.
• based on a selection criteria (eg. its container ID == foo)
• and, I want the following properties off of the object (in the WinRT version, the friendly name is already on the base object)

DevQuery is fundamentally async, but there are both sync and async versions of the query APIs.

BTW, you might as well do the initial devnode enumeration with these APIs as well.

Make sure you are using the DEVPKEY_Device_ContainerId key, and not the base container ID to find the device container object. They are often the same, but not always.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/devpkey-device-containerid

Answer 2

Hi Samad,

Thanks for the information. I'll likely use the Windows.Devices.Enumeration libraries to accomplish my task. Is this API compatible with Windows 7?

I wasn't able to find the DevQuery API you mentioned. Can you point me towards where this API is documented? Or is the Windows.Device.Enumeration source code available somewhere?

Answer 3

How can I get my Microsoft hybrid learning certification

Answer 4

Email samadtni@gmail.com