Rescan device tree for hardware changes during Driver installation

Question

I'm using InstallShield to install my application, a driver and a service. I need to install the plug-N-play driver only if it's hardware ID was found in the device manager. The driver installation is done using DPInst.exe. My problem, is that a user can sometimes manually uninstall the driver (After it was installed or even uninstall the "Unknown driver" under "Other devices") and then I can't find the hardware ID in the device tree, although the device is plugged. If I rescan the device tree during installation using CM_Reenumerate_DevNode_Ex (The code equivalent of "Scan for new hardware"), I can find the hardware ID but this brings up the "Found new hardware wizard".

Is there anyway to rescan the device tree but suppress the "Found new hardware wizard" or to avoid rescanning but still making sure my device hardware ID is present in the system?

Answer 1

I'm writing a new answer since we already have too many comments on my older one, and its content was based on a small misunderstanding of the situation.

The actual problem, as I understand it now, is the "Add new hardware" wizard that pops-up when rescanning for devices, before installing your driver. Unfortunately, this wizard pops-up whenever no suitable driver is found to handle a new device in the system, so in order to overcome it, the only option is to make sure that such a driver exists in the system. This leads to two possible solutions that I can see:

1. Go for a software first installation, and make sure that your driver is suitable for the device (the inf is well formed, and you have WHQL signing). As far I understand, this is not an option, because you do not want to install the driver on machines that don't have the device connected (I would love to hear why).
2. Make sure that some other driver in the system is suitable to handle it. In that case you need to choose one of the built-in drivers (one that wouldn't wreak havoc if it were to act as a function driver for your device), and give your device a matching compatible ID - one that would cause the built-in driver to be found suitable. This way you will not have to wait for the user after re-scanning for devices, but depending on your device, finding a fitting built-in driver might be impossible.

Answer 2

It sounds like you're going about it the wrong way. If you have an MSI based installation, why not use DIFxApp instead of DPInst? As for the "Found new hardware" wizard, you'll need two things here:

1. Make sure that your inf file is correct (so that your driver is associated with the hardware id)
2. Get a WHQL signature from MS. This step is needed for XP, as untrusted drivers will not be automatically assigned to devices. With Vista and 7 you can digitally sign the driver yourself, but you'll get a warning during installation, asking the user whether he/she wishes to trust this publisher (you).