Is there an API call to start a scan for hardware devices

Question

Related to this question, but... is it possible to trigger via API a new hardware device scan? I have a serial port Bluetooth device that I'm pairing automatically via API calls with 32feet.net .NET Bluetooth, which works quite nicely. While i can query for the serial services in the scanning of the device, the COM ports don't show up in the Bluetooth Devices dialog's COM Ports tab.

Answer 1

Not sure if this will help your overall problem but this should answer the question in your first sentence.

I originally did something like this using Nullsoft's NSIS installer a few years ago.

If you just want to trigger a vanilla hardware scan you can use the following code (provided in C# per the .net tag in this question):

This is the wrapper class for the P/Invoke functions

public static class Win32Api
{
    public const int CM_LOCATE_DEVNODE_NORMAL = 0x00000000;
    public const int CM_REENUMERATE_NORMAL = 0x00000000;
    public const int CR_SUCCESS = 0x00000000;

    [DllImport("CfgMgr32.dll", SetLastError=true)]
    public static extern int CM_Locate_DevNodeA(ref int pdnDevInst, string pDeviceID, int ulFlags);

    [DllImport("CfgMgr32.dll", SetLastError=true)]
    public static extern int CM_Reenumerate_DevNode(int dnDevInst, int ulFlags);
}

This is a sample of how to use them

int pdnDevInst = 0;

        if (Win32Api.CM_Locate_DevNodeA(ref pdnDevInst, null, Win32Api.CM_LOCATE_DEVNODE_NORMAL) != Win32Api.CR_SUCCESS)
            throw new Exception("something...");

        if (Win32Api.CM_Reenumerate_DevNode(pdnDevInst, Win32Api.CM_REENUMERATE_NORMAL) != Win32Api.CR_SUCCESS)
            throw new Exception("something else...");

I just quickly translated this from the MSDN C++ docs and tested it in a spike so I know it works but it's not production quality. Also, if you care about the specific return codes you can look them up in cfgmgr32.h.