Is it possible to install USB serial converter in Windows without administrator privileges?

Question

I have got a piece of hardware which communicates with my program using an FT2232C USB serial converter. All works fine if the device has already been attached to a computer before and the drivers were installed using an administrator account. But that is not the usual case.

These devices will be attached and removed at will and it will also not always be the same device that will be attached to a particular computer. Also, most of the users will not have administrator privileges and the computers are not connected to a LAN.

It is possible to automatically push files to these computers and add registry entries.

Does anybody have got any pointers on how to make Windows believe the devices driver has already been installed? I am currently thinking along the lines of tracking all changes that the driver installer does to the Windows installation and making these changes without any user interaction. But maybe there is an easier way?

We are currently talking Windows XP but in the not so far future there will be more and more Windows 7 (64 bit) computers as well.

Answer 1

While you could "pre-install" the driver by doing all the changes to the registry yourself (under a SYSTEM account, not regular Administrator -- you can use SysInternals PsExec to do this), this wouldn't help you unless you'd preinstall it for all possible ports. (Only USB devices which have an embedded serial number can be installed just once. Others are installed per-port.)

Another option is to sign the driver. A signed driver installs silently without the need for administrative credentials.

Does the vendor driver come with a .cat file? (And is the .cat file WHQL-signed?) If yes, you don't have a problem. Just install the driver with the standard tools (e.g. DPInst).

If not, you can always generate your own WHQL certificate (you cannot BUY a WHQL certificate), push this to all computers (since you're an administrator, you can do this) and then use the regular Windows tools (e.g. DPInst) to place the driver in the machines' driver stores. To generate the certificate, use CertUtil.exe and make sure you specify the "Windows System Component Verification" EKU. To sign the driver, use MakeCat.exe and SignTool.exe.

Answer 2

The best method with XP for the timebeing is to get hold of the administrator password, I used the following method a few months back and it has been brilliant, there is free software and instructions available here:

http://www.loginrecovery.com/