Device Installation Toolkit

The device driver installation support built into Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows XP x64 is not well-suited in some scenarios and may not be intuitive to use. Complete uninstallation of a device driver is not supported by Windows. This may cause problems when drivers are updated. Driver installation problems may raise support cost drastically.

To avoid such problems and to improve user experience it may be necessary to implement an individual setup wizard. Unfortunately, creating a setup wizard that reliable handles installation and uninstallation of Windows device drivers is not an easy task. The Setup API provided by Windows is fairly complex and does not cover all necessary features. So, significant effort is required to create and test a device driver installation/uninstallation wizard. Thesycon's Device Installation Toolkit helps to reduce development time and cost.

The Device Installation Toolkit

The Device Installation Toolkit greatly simplifies the task of creating a custom device installation/ uninstallation wizard. The toolkit is provided in two distinct editions: Basic and Pro. For a complete list of features, see below.

The toolkit includes a design guide and sample code that assist in creating a reliable device installation/uninstallation wizard.

The core component of the Device Installation Toolkit is DIT_DevInst.dll which may be redistributed together with a custom setup wizard. The DLL provides a simple and intuitive programming interface. The DEVINST API consists of C-style functions which expect simple integer and string parameters. Consequently, the API can be used from any programming language and from the script language of professional installation development tools.
The toolkit includes source code samples that implement common driver installation and cleanup tasks and demonstrate usage of the programming interface.

Features

New in Version 3.0

Support for Windows Vista (32 and 64 bit)
Support for Windows Server 2003 (32 and 64 bit)
Installation of a driver for an individual device instance
Information about single devices and their drivers currently installed
Significant performance improvement, especially for uninstallation/cleanup
OS version checking works under old Windows versions which are not supported by DIT (e.g. Windows 98)
Logging has been improved (simplifies problem analysis)
Pro version only: Setting of device node parameters now also allows creation of sub-keys