I have some items in a group labeled Software Devices in Device Manager utility in Windows 7.
This group contains three items:
- Lightweight Sensors Root Enumerator
- Microsoft Device Association Root Enumerator
- Microsoft IPv4 IPv6 Transition Adapter Bus
The questions are:
- What is "Software Device" group and what do the devices in this group do? Can a device be software at all?
- What are the functions of the three devices I maintained above?
2 Answers
"Software devices. To test filter drivers, firewalls, and antivirus software that's installed on the test computer."
Sounds like virtual hardware to me.
Everything that runs as a driver also appears in Device Manager. This also includes virus scanners and software firewalls and whatnot. Most of these are in the Non-PnP devices category. They are also hidden by default, because they generally are not relevant to end users. You explicitly chose to show hidden devices.
Note: Beginning from Windows 8, the Non-PnP view no longer exists.
An easy-ish to understand example for “software device” is a virtual network adapter. These are used extensively for VPN connections. If you install the OpenVPN client, it installs a virtual network adapter. Rather than connecting to a physical network, it connects to the VPN client, which then encapsulates the traffic appropriately. This is great because applications don’t need to know they’re using a VPN connection. It’s just like any other network connection.
Of course, this is but a single use case. Another common use case is emulating storage drives, either hard disks or optical drives.
