Properties of Device Objects
Each device object has certain properties that describe the device and how the device object interacts with the system. The device object properties include:
Device type. Specifies the device's type of hardware. For more information about device types, see Specifying Device Types.
Device characteristics. Specifies flags that provide additional information about the device. For more information, see Specifying Device Characteristics.
Exclusive access. Specifies whether the device object represents an exclusive device. If the device is exclusive, only one handle can be open for the device object at a time. (If the underlying device supports overlapped I/O, multiple threads of the same process can send requests through a single handle.) For more information, see Specifying Exclusive Access to Device Objects.
Security descriptor. Device objects have a security descriptor that controls access to the device. For more information, see Securing Device Objects.
For each of these properties, a default value can be set when the device object is created. For more information about creating device objects, see Creating a Device Object.
Values for device object properties can also be set in the registry. See Setting Device Object Properties in the Registry for more information.