title: Opening a handle to a driver from user mode
body: <p>I have a driver and I created a symbolic name to it. The symbolic name is ...</p>
  
  <pre><code>L"\\DosDevices\\hook"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I try to access the device object using <code>CreateFile()</code> from <code>usermode</code>, I always get an error, <code>"The system cannot find the file specified".</code></p>
  
  <p>I tried using <code>CreateFile()</code> with the following paths ...</p>
  
  <pre><code>"\\.\hook"
  "\\Device\\hook"
  "\\\\.\\hook"
  "\\.\hook"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but it still doesn't work.
  However if i try the same API call in Visual Basic 6, "\\.\\hook" works correctly, however the documentation says that it should be "\\\\.\\hook".
  What is the problem here ? What is the purpose of all these "\" and how do i make it work with Visual C++ ?</p>