How do you enable/disable a driver in Windows?

[DrWhy]

I need to disable and re-enable a hardware driver in a test script. This is to allow me to test an application's behavior when the hardware (a USB key in this particular case) is available or unavailable or becomes unavailable during normal operations. (I don't want to have to stand next to the machine and manually pull out the the usb device at the right time when I run the script :)

Does any monk out there know how this can be done inside a Perl script? I'm looking for a solution that works on modern Windows OS's (anything newer than NT), though a Linux/*nix solution would be of interest as well.

[BrowserUk]

I need to disable and re-enable a hardware driver in a test script.

Terminology query: Do you want to simply stop and start the service programmatically?

If so, see Win32::Service.

Or do you want to disable/enable the service in the sense of changing the services configuration?

Then you'll need to use Win32::API to gain access to ChangeServiceConfig and the other service related support apis.

[DrWhy]

I'm far from being a Windows guru, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure services are what I'm talking about. I want to turn off the driver software that allows the OS to recognize and communicate with a USB device (actually a specific type of USB device, but that's probably not relevant). Is it possible that each device driver also has a service associated with it that? I've not seen that before. What I'm talking about is doing what you would normally do by hand by going to the System control panel, clicking on the 'Hardware' link and then drilling down to the details for the specific driver in question and then selecting 'disable' from the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window.

[BrowserUk]

Yes. You are looking to disable a device driver, not a service.

The particular APIs needed do this are located in DEVMGR.DLL, probably one of DeviceProperties(A|W), or DevicePropertiesEx(A|W) or DeviceAdvancedProperties(A|W). However, these APIs are officially undocumented, so working out what the parameters are would be extremely difficult.

There are various hardware and DD developer kits available that provide (indirect but documented) access to these APIs, (Windows Device Testing Framework (WDTF); Device Driver Kits (DDKs); WDK etc. ), but which one you would need and whether it would cost money depends upon the version and age of the OS etc. I assume this is not the route you are looking to take.

BTW. The description you give of how to do this manually indicates that you are working with a fairly old version of Windows? On XP (and I think on 2000/2003), the interface changed. You now do this manually via:

Administrative tools->Computer management->Device Manager

That means that it may be possible to adjust these settings programmatically via the Windows Management Interface (WMI) on these later systems--but that probably doesn't help if you're working with NT or earlier.

It's also possible to disable them by adjusting the values of the appropriate registry entries (Win32API::Registry), but I think that you then need a re-boot for it to take affect.

Ultimately, I'm guessing that what you are trying to do is disable the use of USB thumb drives and similar "security risk" devices for corporate desktops? If so, the best way is to do this through the application of appropriate group policies and articles of this nature may be more appropriate to your needs.