USB Sniffer

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This is a bit of a specialist subject so this may or may not catch anyone who knows anything about it.

As per the subject I'm looking for a USB sniffer (hardware or software) so I can interpret some interaction between a printer and software utility. If anyone has used any and can recommend to get or avoid it'd be a big help... The idea is to identify a key sequence that's being sent to the printer for a specific task.

I hasten to add I have absolutely no ideas on how sniffers should work, or indeed how to utilise the results I get from them so if anyone has any primers on interpreting the data that would be useful too..

.. and just for the record, I'm not planning anything even remotely illegal..

Cheers and thanks in advance.

[Domino]

give this a read CaptureSetup/USB - The Wireshark Wiki

shows how to get wireshark to read usb traffic to a VM running under virtualbox

[plexer]

SniffUsb 2.0 - A USB Sniffer for Windows

Never used it just found it.

Ben

[plexer]

Un sniffeur pour Windows 98, 98SE, 2000 et Windows XP

This one too.

Ben

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Thanks for the suggestions guys...

Appreciate the suggestions a la google but what I'm really after is recommendations based on actual experience and usage so whilst they are useful, the real valuable intel is in the experience ... Ta...

[SYNACK]

No experience per say on the USB front but it sounds like you want to reverse engineer a protocol to be able to trigger some features or abilities from a bit of custom software. There are some initial writeups on how to get started along with some tools and refferences here:
Learning how to reverse engineer a Windows USB driver: the Luxeed LED keyboard | Roar of the Jespersaur
So you want to reverse engineer a USB protocol
dsd’s weblog » Blog Archive » Reverse Engineering
OscopeCapture: Reverse Engineering the USB Protocol? - Reconn's World Project Log

As to outputting these commands over USB you would either need to replay the commands over the existing driver with the sniffing gear or look into writing your own interface driver:
The Basics:Getting Started Writing Windows Drivers
Writing USB Drivers with WDF
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Windows-WDM-Device-Drivers/dp/0879305657]Amazon.com: Writing Windows WDM Device Drivers: Chris Cant: Books[/ame]

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it sounds like you want to reverse engineer a protocol to be able to trigger some features or abilities from a bit of custom software.

Pretty much... It's a case of looking for the magic command to reset a bit of data on the printer.

As to outputting these commands over USB you would either need to replay the commands over the existing driver with the sniffing gear or look into writing your own interface driver:

Right... hopefully I won't need to delve too deeply into that side of things as I've a bod with more experience on that side of things ready to fix that. Appreciate the info though, definitely useful.