Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Chapter 27: Using the Windows Application Programming Interface

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RetVal = _

apiGetComputerName(ComputerName, NameSize)

If RetVal > 0 Then

GetComputerName = Left$(ComputerName, NameSize)

Else

GetComputerName = vbNullString

End If

End Function

GetDriveTypeA

From time to time, you may need to know what types of hard disks and optical drives are installed
on a user’s computer. You wouldn’t want to, for instance, try writing to an optical drive on the
user’s computer unless you knew it was capable of read/write operations. The GetDriveTypeA
API function returns a value indicating the type of drive specified by the lpszPath parameter.

Declare Function apiGetDriveType Lib “Kernel32” _

Alias “GetDriveTypeA”( _

ByVal lpszPath As String) As Long

You pass the function the path to the drive you want to test, and GetDriveTypeA returns a long
integer value representing the drive type. The following constants can be used to determine the
drive type:

Const DRIVE_UNKNOWN = 0

Const DRIVE_NOT_AVAILABLE = 1

Const DRIVE_REMOVABLE = 2

Const DRIVE_FIXED = 3

Const DRIVE_REMOTE = 4

Const DRIVE_CDROM = 5

Const DRIVE_RAMDISK = 6

Read/write optical drives (such as a CD-RW or DVD-RW drive) and USB thumb drives are
reported as DRIVE_REMOVABLE.

The following function cycles through each drive possibility and prints its type in the debug win-
dow using the constants listed earlier and GetDriveTypeA:

Function GetAllDriveTypes() As String

Dim DriveInfo As String

Dim PathName As String

Dim intChar As Integer

Dim RetVal As Long

Dim DriveType As String

For intChar = 65 To 90

‘ The backward slash is not required,

‘ but does not interfere with this API call.

‘ The colon is required, however:

PathName = Chr$(intChar) & “:\”