How can I find out what my "Unknown Device" is

almoststew1990 · 19 Jun 2018 at 20:33

I'm doing the family IT Support thing again and reinstalled Windows on a family member's little ASUS EEE 1005HA netbook. It's got XP on it and I got all the drivers from the ASUS website. However, one device is "uknown device" and it pops up every time I log into Windows requesting driver install. Things I've tried:

Manually installing every driver on the ASUS EEE 1005HA downloads page via Device Manager
Turning off all the PCI/IDE/SATA features (e.g. LAN) in the BIOS to see if the message goes away (it doesn't)
Installing all drivers anyway using their setup files (e.g. bluetooth was on the webpage but this laptop doesn't have bluetooth)

Is there any way I can find out what device it is? It isn't anything obvious like webcam or SD card reader, audio etc.

UnworthyBean · 19 Jun 2018 at 20:38

I used to use pcidatabase, looks like that is no more but there are replacements like pcilookup. Might be worth a shot.

almoststew1990 · 19 Jun 2018 at 20:47

That's odd, it is not actually in device manager, even when the install driver dialogue window is open...

medievaltw · 19 Jun 2018 at 20:51

You might have to update the BIOS and/or CHIPSET drivers for it to be recognised in device manager.

Also when you can get to the properties of the "unknown device" use the Details TAB get the HW ID and paste that into Google or a PCI database to find out what it is