Identifying Unknown devices

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Hey,

I was just wondering what are some of the good software for identifying unkown devices in device manager. I looked around my self before but couldnt find anything useful.

Thanks in advance.

 

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i dont know about software(i know sisoft have got something) but i always do a pci search on this page

 

Not sure, but I have a question about this too

When I format my pc without removing any hardware and before I reinstall the drivers I get unknown hardware detected would this be my graphics card, as its the only pci-e card I have installed.

I do have an exhaust fan in the pc but this does not go into a slot on the mobo, only the power cable plugs into the cable from the psu. So this wouldnt be detected, is that correct?

 

unknown devices are anything that windows cant install the driver for. your best bet is to install all your drivers individually for each component. i always install in this order

bios update
SATA/RAID drivers (if needed)
Windows
chipset
gfx
LAN
audio
anything else

sometimes there's a device that wont install and have found that putting the motherboard cd in and searching that for the driver solves the problem.

grim

 

Thanks for the replies guys.

Thomas,

I never heard of that site, but thanks for mentioning it, it looks very useful.

 

also don't rely on drivers installed by Windows you'll see a performance gain (in benchmarking) if you install the manfacturers drivers and keep them up to date.

grim

 

Device manager is not very good at identifying 'unknown devices' If M$ had thought about it they would have shown the ID values for such - but that of course would be too difficult for the average punter.

There are two ways of getting the info.
1) On many BIOSes (but sadly not many 'well known manuf' ones) there is shown a list of PCI devices on boot. Use those to id what you have.
2) Much better get something like CrystalCPUID which not only shows the IDs, but also has a good idea what it is! (I use this a lot at the fairs to ID stuff brought to me).

Harry.

 

Grim,

Thanks for the reply, its just that when I installed the motherboard chipset drivers, I used the nVidia chipset drivers since my motherboards chipset is nVida, but I was able to figure out that it was the ATI T200 unified driver that wasnt installed.

I ended up reinstalling the ATI driver to fix that problem, but then it struck me what if this happens next time with something else, I just wanted to make sure I have a method to fix the problem

Harry,

Thanks for the info about the app CrystalCPUID, I will definitely take a look at it.

 

Yup that is correct mate

 

hi there

get a prog called aida or everest or google for the ultimate boot cd which will let u boot into a pre windows environment where u can run a prog to scan i/o devices.

Or see my post on driver cds here:

http://certforums.co.uk/forums/thread18354.html

 

I tend to use the free scan from driveragent.com

You hover your mouse over the unknown device and they tell you what it is, then you go and search the net for the driver..

I've used it to do several pc's and laptops.

 

I had to format my harddrive lastweek and could not find the cd for my sound card so i used driverguide.com toolkit at http://www.driverguidetoolkit.com/ downloaded the free version and found the driver for it on there as well.