Getting Serial Port Information

Question

I have some code that loads the serial ports into a combo-box:

     List<String> tList = new List<String>(); 

     comboBoxComPort.Items.Clear();

     foreach (string s in SerialPort.GetPortNames())
     {
        tList.Add(s);
     }

     tList.Sort();
     comboBoxComPort.Items.Add("Select COM port...");
     comboBoxComPort.Items.AddRange(tList.ToArray());
     comboBoxComPort.SelectedIndex = 0;

I would like to add the port descriptions (similar to what are shown for the COM ports in the Device Manager) to the list and sort the items in the list that are after index 0 (solved: see above snippet). Does anyone have any suggestions for adding the port descriptions? I am using Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition (.NET 2.0). Any thoughts you may have would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

There is a post about this same issue on MSDN:

Getting more information about a serial port in C#

Hi Ravenb,

We can't get the information through the SerialPort type. I don't know why you need this info in your application. However, there's a solved thread with the same question as you. You can check out the code there, and see if it can help you.

If you have any further problem, please feel free to let me know.

Best regards, Bruce Zhou

The link in that post goes to this one:

How to get more info about port using System.IO.Ports.SerialPort

You can probably get this info from a WMI query. Check out this tool to help you find the right code. Why would you care though? This is just a detail for a USB emulator, normal serial ports won't have this. A serial port is simply know by "COMx", nothing more.