Identify an unidentified device in windows 7 without opening up the computer?

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If I go to Device Manager and click on the device I am trying to connect, the device properties does not always (almost never) list the actual device name and model. Is there any way to identify unidentified devices for which I will later find drivers for on Google?

TheOne

Posted 2013-12-11T15:51:15.497

Reputation: 1 265

Question was closed 2013-12-13T05:01:34.510

Answers

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You want to get the PCI vendor and product (device) ID numbers from Device Manager, and do a search on that. Sometimes hardware is too esoteric for even this to work, but it's helpful in most cases.

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"8086" is Intel, by the way.

This is assuming it's a PCI device. USB devices have a vendor and device ID as well.

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There's a couple of other buses such as SMBus and UMBus. Some hardware is reported by ACPI or not on a bus - things like this may not be possible to identify. Keep in mind it's possible some "devices" in Device Manager are not real devices at all, such as VPN adapters and most of the Non Plug and Play devices.

If you have a Linux boot disk handy, you can boot it up and then execute the lspci and lsusb commands which usually give you pretty good information.

LawrenceC

Posted 2013-12-11T15:51:15.497

Reputation: 63 487

Looking up the hardware ids on google did the trick. No lspci for windows? – TheOne – 2013-12-11T16:12:13.937

Nope though there may be an equivalent Windows GUI utility out there I'm unaware of somewhere. – LawrenceC – 2013-12-11T16:13:12.223

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Try this website, it might be helpful:

http://pcidatabase.com/

With the device and vendor ID you should be able to find a driver.

A32167

Posted 2013-12-11T15:51:15.497

Reputation: 152