If you get deep enough into dealing with device issues on Windows you’ll eventually run into references to the command line Windows Device Console, otherwise known as devcon.exe. This can be an especially handy tool for working with devices on Windows, especially if you need to do so in an automated process.
VMware KB 1179 illustrates one such common use of devcon, removing hidden/missing network adapters. This use case is in fact what lead me to the utility. But this isn’t a post about using the Windows Device Console.
This is, instead, a post to document a somewhat speedy way to get the tool. There’s a couple of different posts from Microsoft on this topic, https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/deploymentguys/2009/12/16/where-to-find-devcon-exe/and https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/182.how-to-obtain-the-current-version-of-device-console-utility-devcon-exe.aspx you’ll probably very quickly deduce from these that you can either 1) download older versions, probably not for your architecture/platform or 2) you can download the Windows Driver Kit, install some subset of tools from that and then you have devcon.exe.
However, if while you’re on the page for the Windows Driver Kit downloads you look around a bit, you’ll also see the Enterprise WDK, currently labeled “Install the EWDK 1703.” While it is a large download, once you have this downloaded and extracted, you’ll find a Program Files\Windows Kits\10\tools path with folders for x86, x64, and arm64 (probably less useful in this context). In each of these folders is a devcon.exe executable for that platform, no odd install flags required.
