WPD does not work correctly on Windows XP (SP1 if that matters), even if Microsoft states it does.

Problem with WPD:

IPortableDeviceManager.GetDevices call does not find any devices on Win XP while it finds all connected cameras on Windows 7.

A few other people had this same problem with WPD not working on XP, no solution: 1 2

I have decided to reimplement the functionality using WIA.

Problem with WIA automation/WIA interfaces:

• WIA automation offers only silly dialogs when interacting with the camera - I need to rather do this from code
• Programming against WIA interfaces is recommended to achieve lower level tasks with WIA. I have not found any samples how to use WIA interfaces from C# (also found some indication that this is not possible at all or at least very hard to do)

Thus I have looked at WIA 2.0 (wrapper around wiaaut.dll):

• I am getting HRESULT 0x80210006 (WIA_ERROR_BUSY) for the first time and then HRESULT E_FAIL all the time on Win XP while on Windows 7 the same code works without a problem.

I am getting out of options here... Can you recommend an alternative to provide the following features for cameras connected to the computer that works on Windows XP?

• sends a notification that a picture was taken
• allows to download the recently taken picture from the camera