In my C# 2008 application, I use the SerialPort.GetPortNames() function to retrieve the list of currently available ports. What I have noticed is, when ever I plug in a USB device, it’s port number i s shown in the list on my Application and when I unplug it and refresh the list, the port number is no longer there.
One phase of the application involves reading/writing data from/to the device continuously. Now, my expectation is, If I unplug the device during the operation and get the current Port list using SerialPort.GetPortNames(), the Port Name will not be there and I can use that to make the decision that the device has been unplugged.
To my surprise, the Port name is still found despite having it removed
Why is the program behaving like this? The port name isn’t listed when in no-communication mode. Does it have something to do with the device being removed when it’s communicating?
I’m assuming you mean System.IO.Ports.SerialPort.GetPortNames(), because i could not find a GetPortList() function anywhere. MSDN says: “If the registry contains stale or otherwise incorrect data then the GetPortNames method will return incorrect data”, so that’s probably where the problem lies. I guess Windows doesn’t update the registry if the port is still being ‘used’, just like you can’t delete a file when a program has a handle on it.
If you want to test if the device is removed, you can do so with a Window API call (http://www.pinvoke.net/default.aspx/user32/RegisterDeviceNotification.html). Hope that helps!