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Question

How can I use 2 different drivers for the same USB port?

Oct 13, 2014 12:38AM PDT

I am using Windows 7 64 bits and am using a USB dongle which implements a front end for a software defined radio. I have 2 applications and each one uses its own USB driver. Each application works fine as long as it is the only one installed. However, if I install both applications, then Windows will only use the driver of the most recent installation - so as a result, I am unable to use the application which was installed first.
Is there any way to select between the 2 drivers, without having to reinstall the desired one each time I want to use its application?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
So far it's automatic.
Oct 13, 2014 2:22AM PDT

The driver for the USB device is one thing. The driver for the USB port is another. I can see a new programmer/user may not know why this differs but for now this should be automatic. If not, one or the other app is defective in some way.

Time to call both makers to hash it out.
Bob

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How can I use 2 different drivers for a USB dongle?
Oct 13, 2014 6:42AM PDT

I am using an application called BlazeHDTV 6.0 and another application called SDRSharp. They use proprietary device drivers to access the dongle. I understand the difference between accessing a port and accessing a device attached to the port. My question is "How can the drivers be switched after Windows boots?

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Back to those companies to fix the bugs.
Oct 13, 2014 6:49AM PDT

I'm only an electronics designer with some USB device driver background too. You might be able to put such into a VM (I used VirtualBox years ago to pull this off.)

SDRSharp looks to be open source so there's some hope you can fix that one.

SDRSharp is NOT proprietary from what I can tell.
Bob

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Just chatted with my programming friends.
Oct 13, 2014 6:54AM PDT
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Sorry but I forgot to add this.
Oct 13, 2014 7:01AM PDT

Be sure to try CodeProject. Good question but something not right about this one. That is, drivers provide access to the hardware, etc. Apps use that access. Unless someone did something odd ball.