Essential Tips & Tricks: Unknown Devices

How often have you installed Windows on a system and come across unknown hardware that remains after you have installed all your available drivers?  This might have been when setting up a client’s PC (with limited driver supply) from scratch, a multipurpose device that requires a few different drivers or simply a case of forgetting about a particular hardware device that you have installed.  Here’s a method of acquiring information on exactly what the device is..

All devices have a Vendor and Device ID.  To obtain this information do the following:

1. Locate Device Manager via Control Panel.
2. Right-click on the device marked as unknown and click on Properties.
3. Click on the Details tab and select Device Instance Id from the drop down menu.
4. The text should look resemble this:
   PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0402&SUBSYS_82431043&REV_A1
5. Within this string of text, the 4 characters after VEN_ are for the Vendor ID, and the 4 characters after the DEV_ portion are for the Device ID.
6. Now you can visit PCI Database and type either one of these IDs into their respective search fields.

Yet another way to reduce driver hassle..