Windows 7 Device Manager in text mode

Question

Which Windows binary is responsible for the Device Manager? I'm looking for a solution to automate some routine configuration of specific devices in text mode.

Answer 1

The "windows binary" is actually a mmc snap-in, which is not an "exe". If you're looking at listing & displaying properties of hardware in windows, your best bet is to look towards writing your own program using the native windows API: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd319331(v=vs.85).aspx

Alternatively, you can probably extract what you need using vbscript or the powershell using the WMI calls: http://richardspowershellblog.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/hardware-reporting-script-vbscript-and-powershell-versions/

Answer 2

You might want to take a look at DevCon:

The DevCon utility is a command-line utility that acts as an alternative to Device Manager. Using DevCon, you can enable, disable, restart, update, remove, and query individual devices or groups of devices. DevCon also provides information that is relevant to the driver developer and is not available in Device Manager.

Answer 3

I think you are looking for WMI and the wmic.exe command-line tool.

There is a lot of WMI documentation on the Microsoft site and others. Here's what I found