Files Generated by usb.dll or hid.dll?

[zenthoef]

Hi -

I'm not sure if anyone will know the answer to this question here, but perhaps someone can tell me where I can go to find the answer!

It seems to me that when an HID USB device is attached to a Windows computer that Windows will generate some files that are associated with that device. Specifically, it seems to generate .cfg and .ini files that are based on the serial number of the device. For example, if a device with serial number 123 is attached it then generates files A00000123.cfg and A00000123.ini. I'm interested in finding those files and it seems that a normal Windows search (even with search hidden devices enabled) can't find those files. Anyone here know where such files might live or how I can find them?

Thanks!

[Jan Axelson]

You can retrieve HID serial numbers with HidD_GetSerialNumberString. Not every HID has a serial number.

Jan

[zenthoef]

Thanks for the response. Maybe I wasn't clear in what I was asking, though.

Let me try again. 

I'm not interested in try to figure out the serial number of an HID device attached to a computer. I'm interested in learning more about .ini and .cfg files that are generated for each serialized HID USB device that is attached to a machine.

I don't have much more information than that. However, I suspect such files exist because windows was telling me they are corrupt. These files take on the naming convention: SerialNumber.ini and SerialNumber.cfg. Where SerialNumber is the HID device's serial number. It also seems like an A is prefixed before the serial number. So a serial number of 123 would have files A00000123.ini and A00000123.cfg.

Any ideas?

[Jan Axelson]

Where are you seeing messages telling you the files are corrupt? Do you know what devices the serial numbers are for?

Jan

[zenthoef]

The serial numbers belong to our product that we test. I am a test engineer, so I don't know a lot about the inner workings of the HID USB stuff. Primarily, I talk to our HID USB devices through the hid.dll (indirectly) in LabVIEW. So the .cfg and .ini files that have the serial number as the file name were pretty easy to spot.

I saw the message these were corrupt on one computer when it was starting up. When it was starting up Windows decided to run CHKDSK and when it was running it reported that several files were corrupt that had the serial number as the file name.

Specifically, the part of the message I caught reading something like:

"SERIAL_NUMER.ini corrupt in index $I30 of file 9567"

It then listed a couple of .cfg files that had other serial numbers for the file names.

I have no idea what that means. No one at my work knows what that means either. Nor did anyone here know that Windows seems to make those files.

The reason I am interested is that I am tracking down another problem and I suspect that those files (not just the corrupt ones, all of them) might have something to do with it. However, I can't find them very easily...

Thanks again!

[Jan Axelson]

I don't have direct experience with Labview, but it seems to use cfg and ini files. Maybe Labview created them?

Re searching for files, see:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;309173

Jan