Get List of connected USB Devices

Question

How can I get a list of all the connected USB devices on a windows computer

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You may find this thread useful  And here s a google code project exemplifying this  it P Invokes into setupapi dll

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I know I m replying to an old question  but I just went through this same exercise and found out a bit more information  that I think will contribute a lot to the discussion and help out anyone else who finds this question and sees where the existing answers fall short   The accepted answer is close  and can be corrected using Nedko s comment to it   A more detailed understanding of the WMI Classes involved helps complete the picture   Win32 USBHub returns only USB Hubs   That seems obvious in hindsight but the discussion above misses it   It does not include all possible USB devices  only those which can  in theory  at least  act as a hub for additional devices   It misses some devices that are not hubs  particularly parts of composite devices    Win32 PnPEntity does include all the USB devices  and hundreds more non-USB devices   Russel Gantman s advice to use a WHERE clause search Win32 PnPEntity for a DeviceID beginning with  USB   to filter the list is helpful but slightly incomplete  it misses bluetooth devices  some printers print servers  and HID-compliant mice and keyboards  I have seen  USB      USBSTOR      USBPRINT      BTH      SWD     and  HID      Win32 PnPEntity is  however  a good  master  reference to look up information once you are in possession of the PNPDeviceID from other sources   What I found was the best way to enumerate USB devices was to query Win32 USBControllerDevice   While it doesn t give detailed information for the devices  it does completely enumerate your USB devices and gives you an Antecedent Dependent pair of PNPDeviceIDs for every USB Device  including Hubs  non-Hub devices  and HID-compliant devices  on your system    Each Dependent returned from the query will be a USB Device   The Antecedent will be the Controller it is assigned to  one of the USB Controllers returned by querying Win32 USBController     As a bonus  it appears that under the hood  WMI walks the Device Tree when responding to the Win32 USBControllerDevice query  so the order in which these results are returned can help identify parent child relationships    This is not documented and is thus only a guess  use the SetupDi API s CM Get Parent  or Child   Sibling  for definitive results    As an option to the SetupDi API  it appears that for all the devices listed under Win32 USBHub they can be looked up in the registry  at HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Enum    PNPDeviceID  and will have a parameter ParentIdPrefix which will be the prefix of the last field in the PNPDeviceID of its children  so this could also be used in a wildcard match to filter the Win32 PnPEntity query   In my application  I did the following     Optional  Queried Win32 PnPEntity and stored the results in a key-value map  with PNPDeviceID as the key  for later retrieval   This is optional if you want to do individual queries later  Queried Win32 USBControllerDevice for a definitive list of USB devices on my system  all the Dependents  and extracted the PNPDeviceIDs of these   I went further  based on order following the device tree  to assign devices to the root hub  the first device returned  rather than the controller  and built a tree based on the parentIdPrefix  The order the query returns  which matches device tree enumeration via SetupDi  is each root hub  for whom the Antecedent identifies the controller   followed by an iteration of devices under it  e g   on my system    Root hub of first controller Root hub of second controller   First hub under root hub of second controller  has parentIdPrefix    First composite device under first hub under root hub of second controller  PNPDeviceID matches above hub s ParentIdPrefix  has its own ParentIdPrefix    HID Device part of the composite device  PNPDeviceID matches above composite device s ParentIDPrefix   Second device under first hub under root hub of second controller   HID Device part of the composite device   Second hub under root hub of second controller   First device under second hub under root hub of second controller  Third hub under root hub of second controller etc    Queried Win32 USBController   This gave me the detailed information of the PNPDeviceIDs of my controllers which are at the top of the device tree  which were the Antecedents of the previous query    Using the tree derived in the previous step  recursively iterated over its children  the root hubs  and their children  the other hubs  and their children  non-hub devices and composite devices  and their children  etc    Retrieved details for each device in my tree by referencing the map stored in the first step   Optionally  one could skip the first step  and query Win32 PnPEntity individually using the PNPDeviceId to get the information at this step  probably a cpu vs  memory tradeoff determining which order is better      In summary  Win32USBControllerDevice Dependents are a complete list of USB Devices on a system  other than the Controllers themselves  which are the Antecedents in that same query   and by cross-referencing these PNPDeviceId pairs with information from the registry and from the other queries mentioned  a detailed picture can be constructed

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Adel Hazzah s answer gives working code  Daniel Widdis s and Nedko s comments mention that you need to query Win32 USBControllerDevice and use its Dependent property  and Daniel s answer gives a lot of detail without code   Here s a synthesis of the above discussion to provide working code that lists the directly accessible PNP device properties of all connected USB devices   using System  using System Collections Generic  using System Management     reference required  namespace cSharpUtilities       class UsbBrowser                public static void PrintUsbDevices                         IList lt ManagementBaseObject gt  usbDevices   GetUsbDevices                 foreach  ManagementBaseObject usbDevice in usbDevices                                Console WriteLine  ----- DEVICE -----                    foreach  var property in usbDevice Properties                                        Console WriteLine string Format   0    1    property Name  property Value                                      Console WriteLine  ------------------                                     public static IList lt ManagementBaseObject gt  GetUsbDevices                         IList lt string gt  usbDeviceAddresses   LookUpUsbDeviceAddresses                 List lt ManagementBaseObject gt  usbDevices   new List lt ManagementBaseObject gt                  foreach  string usbDeviceAddress in usbDeviceAddresses                                   query MI for the PNP device info                    address must be escaped to be used in the query  luckily  the form we extracted previously is already escaped                 ManagementObjectCollection curMoc   QueryMi  Select   from Win32 PnPEntity where PNPDeviceID       usbDeviceAddress                   foreach  ManagementBaseObject device in curMoc                                        usbDevices Add device                                                return usbDevices                     public static IList lt string gt  LookUpUsbDeviceAddresses                            this query gets the addressing information for connected USB devices             ManagementObjectCollection usbDeviceAddressInfo   QueryMi   Select   from Win32 USBControllerDevice                 List lt string gt  usbDeviceAddresses   new List lt string gt                  foreach var device in usbDeviceAddressInfo                                string curPnpAddress    string device GetPropertyValue  Dependent                       split out the address portion of the data  note that this includes escaped backslashes and quotes                 curPnpAddress   curPnpAddress Split new String      DeviceID      2  StringSplitOptions None  1                    usbDeviceAddresses Add curPnpAddress                              return usbDeviceAddresses                        run a query against Windows Management Infrastructure  MI  and return the resulting collection         public static ManagementObjectCollection QueryMi string query                        ManagementObjectSearcher managementObjectSearcher   new ManagementObjectSearcher query               ManagementObjectCollection result   managementObjectSearcher Get                 managementObjectSearcher Dispose                return result                        You ll need to add exception handling if you want it  Consult Daniel s answer if you want to figure out the device tree and such

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lstResult Clear      foreach  ManagementObject drive in new ManagementObjectSearcher  select   from Win32 DiskDrive where InterfaceType  USB    Get               foreach  ManagementObject partition in new ManagementObjectSearcher  ASSOCIATORS OF  Win32 DiskDrive DeviceID      drive  DeviceID         WHERE AssocClass   Win32 DiskDriveToDiskPartition   Get                         foreach  ManagementObject disk in new ManagementObjectSearcher  ASSOCIATORS OF  Win32 DiskPartition DeviceID      partition  DeviceID         WHERE AssocClass   Win32 LogicalDiskToPartition   Get                                    foreach  var item in disk Properties                                             object value   disk GetPropertyValue item Name                                         string valor   disk  Name   ToString                      lstResult Add valor

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If you change the ManagementObjectSearcher to the following   ManagementObjectSearcher searcher           new ManagementObjectSearcher  root  CIMV2             SELECT   FROM Win32 PnPEntity where DeviceID Like   USB          So the  GetUSBDevices   looks like this   static List lt USBDeviceInfo gt  GetUSBDevices       List lt USBDeviceInfo gt  devices   new List lt USBDeviceInfo gt        ManagementObjectCollection collection    using  var searcher   new ManagementObjectSearcher   SELECT   FROM Win32 PnPEntity where DeviceID Like   USB           collection   searcher Get             foreach  var device in collection          devices Add new USBDeviceInfo       string device GetPropertyValue  DeviceID         string device GetPropertyValue  PNPDeviceID         string device GetPropertyValue  Description                  collection Dispose      return devices         Your results will be limited to USB devices  as opposed to all types on your system

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Add a reference to System Management for your project  then try something like this   namespace ConsoleApplication1     using System    using System Collections Generic    using System Management     need to add System Management to your project references     class Program         static void Main string   args              var usbDevices   GetUSBDevices           foreach  var usbDevice in usbDevices                  Console WriteLine  Device ID   0   PNP Device ID   1   Description   2                usbDevice DeviceID  usbDevice PnpDeviceID  usbDevice Description                  Console Read               static List lt USBDeviceInfo gt  GetUSBDevices               List lt USBDeviceInfo gt  devices   new List lt USBDeviceInfo gt            ManagementObjectCollection collection        using  var searcher   new ManagementObjectSearcher   Select   From Win32 USBHub            collection   searcher Get                 foreach  var device in collection                  devices Add new USBDeviceInfo           string device GetPropertyValue  DeviceID             string device GetPropertyValue  PNPDeviceID             string device GetPropertyValue  Description                              collection Dispose          return devices               class USBDeviceInfo         public USBDeviceInfo string deviceID  string pnpDeviceID  string description              this DeviceID   deviceID        this PnpDeviceID   pnpDeviceID        this Description   description            public string DeviceID   get  private set        public string PnpDeviceID   get  private set        public string Description   get  private set

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This is a much simpler example for people only looking for removable usb drives   using System IO   foreach  DriveInfo drive in DriveInfo GetDrives          if  drive DriveType    DriveType Removable                Console WriteLine string Format    0    1    drive Name Replace           drive VolumeLabel

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To see the devices I was interested in  I had replace Win32 USBHub by Win32 PnPEntity in Adel Hazzah s code  based on this post  This works for me   namespace ConsoleApplication1     using System    using System Collections Generic    using System Management     need to add System Management to your project references     class Program         static void Main string   args              var usbDevices   GetUSBDevices           foreach  var usbDevice in usbDevices                  Console WriteLine  Device ID   0   PNP Device ID   1   Description   2                usbDevice DeviceID  usbDevice PnpDeviceID  usbDevice Description                  Console Read               static List lt USBDeviceInfo gt  GetUSBDevices               List lt USBDeviceInfo gt  devices   new List lt USBDeviceInfo gt            ManagementObjectCollection collection        using  var searcher   new ManagementObjectSearcher   Select   From Win32 PnPEntity            collection   searcher Get                 foreach  var device in collection                  devices Add new USBDeviceInfo           string device GetPropertyValue  DeviceID             string device GetPropertyValue  PNPDeviceID             string device GetPropertyValue  Description                              collection Dispose          return devices               class USBDeviceInfo         public USBDeviceInfo string deviceID  string pnpDeviceID  string description              this DeviceID   deviceID        this PnpDeviceID   pnpDeviceID        this Description   description            public string DeviceID   get  private set        public string PnpDeviceID   get  private set        public string Description   get  private set

[c#] Get List of connected USB Devices

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