Hardware ID

A hardware ID is a vendor-defined identification string that Windows uses to match a device to a driver package. A hardware ID identifies a device. It indicates that any driver package that declares it can work with a device that has that ID for some degree of functionality.

In most cases, a device has more than one hardware ID. Typically, a list of hardware IDs is sorted from most to least suitable for a device. For example, the list of conceptual hardware IDs for a device might look like:

<Product X made by company Y with firmware revision Z>
<Product X made by company Y that is a device of type W>

Where the actual hardware IDs would represent those concepts using strings that follow the format requirements of a hardware ID.

Create a hardware ID for a device

Hardware IDs are reported to the Plug and Play Manager (PnP) by a device's enumerator, that is, its bus driver. Typically, when the author of a bus driver needs to create a new hardware ID for a device it reports to PnP, it uses one of the following generic formats:

<enumerator>\<enumerator-specific-device-ID>

This format is the most common for individual PnP devices reported to the Plug and Play manager by a single enumerator.

\*<generic-device-ID>

The asterisk indicates that more than one enumerator supports the device, such as ISAPNP and the BIOS.

<device-class-specific-ID>

For more information, see Generic Identifiers.

An existing device class with its own established naming convention might use a custom format. For information about their hardware ID formats, see the hardware specification for such buses.

The number of characters of a hardware ID, excluding a NULL terminator, must be less than MAX_DEVICE_ID_LEN. This constraint applies to the sum of the lengths of all the fields and any \\ field separators in a hardware ID. For more information, see the Operation section of IRP_MN_QUERY_ID.

Hardware IDs for root enumerated devices

Root enumerated devices are special in that they can be created using APIs where a hardware ID can be provided. Root enumerated devices with hardware IDs that share generic namespaces, such as ROOT\SYSTEM, might conflict. The result is a yellow-bang error icon in Device Manager when updating Windows.

You can prevent this error by using a unique namespace for each driver that has a root enumerated device. For a USB or system device, instead of using ROOT\USB or ROOT\SYSTEM, use ROOT\[COMPANYNAME]\[DEVICENAME]. Then, before installing, check to see if the devnode is already present.

Obtain the list of hardware IDs for a device

To find the list of hardware IDs for a device, follow these steps:

1. In Windows search, enter and select Device Manager.
2. In Device Manager, find the device in the tree.
3. Right-select the device and select Properties.
4. Select the Details tab.
5. For Property, select Hardware Ids or Compatible Ids.

You can also get the list of hardware IDs programmatically by retrieving the DEVPKEY_Device_HardwareIds property on a device. For example, that property can be retrieved with APIs such as IoGetDevicePropertyData, SetupDiGetDeviceProperty, or CM_Get_DevNode_Property.

The list of hardware IDs that this routine retrieves is a REG_MULTI_SZ value. The maximum number of characters in a hardware list, including a NULL terminator after each hardware ID and a final NULL terminator, is REGSTR_VAL_MAX_HCID_LEN. The maximum possible number of IDs in a list of hardware IDs is 64.

Examples of hardware IDs

Here's an example of a generic identifier for a PnP device:

root\*PNP0F08

Here's an example of an identifier for a PCI device:

PCI\VEN_1000&DEV_0001&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_02