devcon disable cannot disable device not found

Question

I'm on Windows 8.1 trying to disable my clickpad programatically. I've installed the correct x64 bit version of devcon as noted here. I can find the correct device but devcon disable with the same parameters fails.

PS C:\...\7600.16385.win7_wdk.100208-1538\tools\devcon\amd64> .\devcon.exe disable 'ACPI\SYN1ECA*'
ACPI\SYN1ECA\4&22077A96&0                                   : Disable failed
No matching devices found.

Which is rather confusing. It obviously finds the right device, but then reports "No matching devices found". What the heck?

Please note that I am aware of this similar question but, in addition to not having an accepted answer, that question has a different error and is likely using the wrong version of devcon.

Answer 1

No Matching Devices is the way that windows tells you that it cannot find or access the devices you are looking for. There can be a couple of causes for this:

1. Incorrect Permissions caused by not running the command prompt/BAT as an administrator. Simply right-click the relevant access method and select 'Run as administrator"
2. Incorrect Access caused by running the wrong version of devcon.exe. As a remnant of the shift to 64 bit computer there are two version of devcon located in the 'Tools' folder, one for x86 and one for x64, ensure that you are running the correct version for your computer and you should be able to perform your tasks without issue.