Location of inpout32.sys and inpoutx64.sys

My x64 port of InpOut32
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n2ic
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Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:32 am

Location of inpout32.sys and inpoutx64.sys

Post by n2ic »

We use inpout32.dll in a free amateur radio app with 5000+ users. Great improvement over dlportio !

Recently, we had a user who installed and ran our software on Windows 7 without having Administrator privileges. As you can imagine, it took forever to figure out why he couldn't access his LPT port. We would like to prevent this from happening in the future, but don't want to automatically run our app with Admin privileges. Instead, we want to check for the existence of inpout32.sys and inpoutx64.sys. If they don't exist, then prompt the user to restart, running with Admin privs. For 32 bit systems, is inpout32.sys always in %windir%/System32/Drivers ? And for 64 bit XP, Vista and Windows 7, where is inpoutx64.sys ? Once inpout32.sys or inpoutx64.sys have been correctly installed, do our users need to continue to run as Admin ?

Thanks,
Steve
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phil
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Re: Location of inpout32.sys and inpoutx64.sys

Post by phil »

Hi Steve,

I'm on vacation right now so I cant check but I think there is a better option. There is a function call on my DLL that checks if the driver is installed.

The reason I did that is that the location of the driver differs from x86 and x64 applications depending on WOW64 emulation and all that. Generally the answer would be windows\system32\drivers. The function will check by trying to actually load the driver.

Once the driver is installed, you don't need admin rights, so perhaps another option is to have an installation kit that installs the driver (by loading the dll etc.) during installation as many users accept installations have to run as admin. There is also an InstallDriver app with the DLL that requires admin so one option would be to just run that.

Anything else will have to wait till I return from holiday next week :)

Thanks,
Phil
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n2ic
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Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:32 am

Re: Location of inpout32.sys and inpoutx64.sys

Post by n2ic »

Yes, it looks like IsInpOutDriverOpen() would make it easy to do what I want.

Thanks Phil ! Enjoy your holiday.

Steve
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