Devcon not working correctly in Windows 7

Question

*original title - Command Prompt pop-ups with DevCon"

Hi everyone,

My problem is :

I use Devcon to manage my devices, it's a small .exe file.

With the command : devcon /hwids, the program returns all the devices linked with the PC.

But when I do this, it open a new window, print the list, and then this window close.

But what should normally happened, and what I want, is that the list print in the same window I execute the command.

With the aim, after, to write this list in a txt file, with the command : devcon /hwids *usb* > device.txt

Thank You !

Answer 1

OK, I've now managed to use devcon.exe to disable/enable my WiFi adapter. Here's what I did.

1. I DL'ed the “Windows Driver Kit (WDK) 7.1.0″ from MS, it is an ISO image several hundreds meg
2. Using UniversalExtractor (http://legroom.net/software/uniextract) I extracted the ISO to a temporary folder on my HD
3. Again using UniversalExtractor, I extracted the install file "WDK\setuptools_x64fre.msi" to a temporary dir
4. In that temporary dir you will find "WinDDK\7600.16385.win7_wdk.100208-1538\tools\devcon\amd64\devcon.exe". This devcon works fine (as far as I've tested) for me under W7x64 Pro.

Along the way UniversalExtractor will prompt you with some warnings, just click OK.

*phew* so much time wasted for such a simple thing...

Note: devcon MUST be run from an administrator cmd win.

Answer 2

Hi walibixo,

Please see the following article with some helpful information:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/wdk/relnotesw7.mspx

Hope this helps!

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Debra

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

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Answer 3

PS In Step 3 above, you could try to run the msi install directly. I did first, but couldn't find where, if at all, the stuff was installed, so I used the UniversalExtractor fix instead.

Answer 4

Not much help, as the only thing concerning devcon I can find there, assumes that devcon works and tells how to correctly install the Windows Portable Devices Multi-Transport Driver. Our problem is that devcon does not work work correctly under W7.

For the OP... open up a cmd window as administrator, that should at least give you the hwids. Using the command

devcon.exe hwids * > hwids.txt

you get a txt-file with all the hwids specified. However, depending on what you want to do, getting the "status" of the devices will give you a shorter file, with essentially the same info.

devcon as given by http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272 does not seem to work correctly on W7x64. I cannot get it to enable/disable any devices. Any hints, anyone?

PS. Clicking the "Devcon Windows 7 download" link to the right on the kb/311272 page does not give anything useful. Or is it just me...

Answer 5

It is just that DevCon does not work properly with the command prompt of Windows 7.

But with Windows XP it's better !