On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 04:47:08PM -0000, Javier Gomez wrote:
> I've already read in a previous email that the device Interface name in
> Windows is picked up from the register, but it is possible to change it
> without crashing something in Windows?
I would assume, unless either
1) Microsoft said otherwise
or
2) somebody'd succeeded in changing the name in the registry
without breaking anything
that arbitrarily changing the interface name by writing to the registry
would break *something*.
In NT prior to NT 5.0 (Windows 2000), the names are BSDish, i.e. a
prefix that's sort of a device name followed by a unit number. There
might be other registry entries, e.g. protocol bindings, that use the
name to refer to the interface, so you might have to change those
bindings as well - and if some part of the system uses the name as
something other than just an opaque string (e.g., if it used the device
name prefix to find the driver, or the unit number to find the unit),
that might also cause problems.
In NT 5.0 and beyond, the names appear to be based on GUIDs assigned to
the device; I suspect that this means that the system thinks that's the
GUID for the device, and that there might well be things that would
break if you changed it (and the protocol bindings issue might still be
there).
In Windows OT (95/98/Me), I don't know how it assigns names/numbers to
the interfaces, and don't know what would break if you changed the name,
but, again, protocol bindings might have to change as well.
So I suspect you run the risk of, at minimum, either
1) a crash
or
2) losing your network connectivity
if you change the name in the registry.
If you succeed in this exercise, let the WinPcap developers know
http://winpcap.polito.it/contact.htm
just for their information.
If you fail, make sure you can undo what you did....