Hello everyone,
A friend of mine MSN'd me the other day and asked me if I could help him identify an unknown device he had in his Device Manager on Windows. There are a few ways it can be done systematically such as narrowing it down etc, but the way I've always done it is really quick and easy...
I don't think many people are aware of this, especially if you're trying to find out what make/model your device is (if it doesn't have any labels etc), so I made a quick step by step guide and hopefully it'll help you find out what that "Unknown Device" actually is
Note: In the below screenshots I just used my graphics card, as I do not have any "Unknown Devices", but it works in exactly the same way
Step 1: Go to the Device's Properties:
Step 2: Click the 'Details' tab, then from the drop-down pick 'Hardware Ids'
Look for where it says "DEV_xxxx". Take note of that xxxx.
Step 3: Go to www.pcidatabase.com, and enter that 4-digit device ID you obtained in the previous step into the website's "Device Search". Make sure you choose device search and not vendor search (although you could just search for vendor if that's all you wanted to know, by using the VEN code in the previous step):
Step 4: Voila
Hope many of you find this useful
A friend of mine MSN'd me the other day and asked me if I could help him identify an unknown device he had in his Device Manager on Windows. There are a few ways it can be done systematically such as narrowing it down etc, but the way I've always done it is really quick and easy...
I don't think many people are aware of this, especially if you're trying to find out what make/model your device is (if it doesn't have any labels etc), so I made a quick step by step guide and hopefully it'll help you find out what that "Unknown Device" actually is
Note: In the below screenshots I just used my graphics card, as I do not have any "Unknown Devices", but it works in exactly the same way
Step 1: Go to the Device's Properties:
Step 2: Click the 'Details' tab, then from the drop-down pick 'Hardware Ids'
Look for where it says "DEV_xxxx". Take note of that xxxx.
Step 3: Go to www.pcidatabase.com, and enter that 4-digit device ID you obtained in the previous step into the website's "Device Search". Make sure you choose device search and not vendor search (although you could just search for vendor if that's all you wanted to know, by using the VEN code in the previous step):
Step 4: Voila
Hope many of you find this useful