USB Serial Host Driver (Windows CE 3.0 Device Driver Developement)

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To enable USB connectivity, the desktop computer running Microsoft Windows 98 or Windows 2000 also needs a USB driver that enables communication with the Windows CE device through a USB connection. Such a driver is available in Microsoft Windows CE Platform Builder, and is called USB Serial Host driver, WCEUSBSH.SYS. Note that this driver is not for use on Windows CE-based platforms; it is the desktop software required to enable USB connectivity between desktop PCs and Windows CE-based platforms. Microsoft ActiveSync 3.1 installs this driver on desktop computers. The main task of the USB Serial Host driver is to expose the standard Win32 serial interface to the upper-level application — such as ActiveSync — so that the application can use the USB connection as if it were a standard serial port connection.

If an OEMs Windows CE-based platform uses ActiveSync to connect to desktop PCs, the OEM does not need to do anything else to enable USB connectivity. However, if the OEM's platform does not use ActiveSync, but requires USB connectivity, then the OEM must provide the USB Serial Host Driver to their customers. Typically, an OEM would provide a setup application to customers which installs the necessary desktop connectivity components, including this driver and an appropriate .INF file. Installing this device driver is no different than any other device driver for Windows 98 or Windows 2000:

Copy the driver's .SYS and .INF files to the desktop computer; for example, to the C:\Temp directory.
Have the user connect the Windows CE-based platform to the desktop computer's USB port. This will invoke the Microsoft Windows "Found New Hardware" Wizard.