If you’re mucking around with a new Windows installation, you’re probably going to run into driver headaches.
- Find Drivers for Unknown Devices with Hardware ID or Device ID If downloading drivers in Top 1 method can’t fix the issue, that’s probably your Windows OS can’t recognize the device ID. You need to find out the ID in order to find the correct drivers.
- To check the hardware id for a device, follow these steps: Open the Device Manager from the Control Panel. You can also type 'devmgmt.msc' at the Run option in the Start menu. In the Device Manager, right-click the device, and select Properties in the popup menu. Select the Details tab.
- Updating Drivers since 1998! Fast Driver Downloads for all of your PCs — Notebooks and Desktops. Access to over 3,100 GB of driver downloads. Drivers for Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and hard-to-find drivers. Printer Drivers, Audio Drivers, Video Drivers, and hundreds of other types.
Right-click on the Hardware ID and click Copy. (If there are more than one values, copy the longest one.) Step 6. Now you can search Device Driver through search engine. Paste Hardware ID into search box and press Enter. Then you can go to drivers list and follow instructions to download the driver. How to: Finding drivers by Vendor and Device ID's through Device Manager. -In the Device Manager menu, whichever way you got to it, find the driver that is missing (yellow question mark). -Right click on that driver and go to “Properties” -In the properties menu, click on the “Details” tab. -In the details tab. The detective work. To find drivers for hardware that Windows refuses to recognize, open Device Manager (a search from the Start menu or Windows 8 Start screen brings it up lickity-split), right-click on the listing for the Unknown Device, select Properties from the context menu, and then click on the Details tab at the top.
No matter whether you’re installing a fresh copy of Windows on a freshly built rig or simply upgrading your PC to a new version of Windows, the OS fails to properly identify all of the hardware connected to the system more often than not. I typically like to download drivers for all of the major components in a PC before I even begin an OS installation, but inevitably a motherboard will have an obscure controller on-board or the system will have a non-descript add-in card that Windows doesn’t recognize.
People deal with driver problems in different ways. Some will hit a motherboard manufacturer’s website and search for the mobo, in hopes of identifying a component by the perusing the motherboard’s manual or spec sheet. Some folks resort to yanking the rig apart—ick—and searching the web for random part numbers on chips or cards they don’t recognize. You’ll likely have some success using either method (I have), but there is a much better way to identify unknown devices in Windows—and you don’t have to whip out any tools to do it.
Delving into the unknown
If you’ve just installed Windows and the Device Manager is loaded with “Unknown devices” or “Other devices” that are in an error state or without any drivers installed, don’t fret! You’re only a few clicks away from ascertaining all of the information you need to identify the device and download its drivers.
Windows will usually brand all of the unrecognized devices in Device Manager with a black exclamation point (!) on a yellow sign. If you’re lucky, the device’s name will be listed and you can simply search for its drivers. Otherwise, the device will most likely be labeled an “Unknown device,” which is not very helpful.
The detective work
To find drivers for hardware that Windows refuses to recognize, open Device Manager (a search from the Start menu or Windows 8 Start screen brings it up lickity-split), right-click on the listing for the Unknown Device, select Properties from the context menu, and then click on the Details tab at the top of the resulting window.
On the Details tab, you’ll see a drop down menu labeled “Property”. The items listed in that drop down menu will offer up a wealth of information about the mysterious device, but it’s the Hardware IDs that are most relevant to this discussion. Select Hardware IDs from the drop down menu and the “Value” field below will populate with a list of values. Consulting the Oracle—excuse me—searching Google for one of the values listed in the Window will usually yield the device’s identity.
ID’ing the suspect
To easily search for drivers for a particular Hardware ID, right-click on the top-most value (usually the one with the longest string of characters) and choose Copy from the menu. Then simply paste that value into your favorite search engine. I typically have the best luck by searching for a Hardware ID along with the OS version and the words “drivers” or “driver”, and “download.”
For example, when installing Windows 8.1 on a Dell XPS 12 recently, I had a number of unknown devices listed in device manager. One of the Hardware Ids was:
PCIVEN_8086&DEV_0153&SUBSYS_05891028
So, I did a search for “PCIVEN_8086&DEV_0153&SUBSYS_05891028 Windows 8.1 driver download”. One of the very first results was for an Intel Dynamic Platform & Thermal Framework Driver. I downloaded and installed the driver, and bingo! It did the trick.
It’s not rocket science, but being able to quickly identify and find drivers for unknown devices in Windows can save a lot of time, especially if you’re constantly upgrading or building systems. If you’ve got any similar tips, we’d love to hear them; please comment below and give a fellow reader a hand.
Windows 10 automatically downloads and installs all the required device drivers as soon as you connect to the Internet. This eliminates the need to manually download and install the drivers to get started. However, if you are using older hardware devices like old printers or graphic cards, the default drivers downloaded by Windows 10 may cause some issues. Moreover, some of us may simply want to stop Windows 10 from downloading drivers for specific hardware like graphic cards. To deal with that, just follow the below steps, and you should be able to stop Windows 10 from installing drivers for a specific hardware device.
Find and Copy Device Hardware IDs
Since we want to block driver updates for a specific hardware device, we need its unique hardware IDs. To get them, search for “Device Manager” in the Start Menu and open it.
Once the Device Manager has been opened, find the hardware device for which you want to block the driver updates. In my case, I’m selecting the graphic card in my old laptop which was abandoned by the manufacturer and no longer provides proper drivers for Windows 10. Right-click on the device and select the option “Properties.”
In the hardware properties window, navigate to the “Details” tab and then select “Hardware IDs” from the drop-down menu under “Property.”
The above action will show you the unique hardware IDs of the target device. Select all the listed IDs, right-click and then select the option “Copy.”
We are going to need these IDs in a few steps, so paste them into a text file for safekeeping.
Download Driver By Hardware Id
Block Driver Updates for Specific Device Using Group Policy Editor
Press “Win + R,” type gpedit.msc and press the Enter button to open the Windows 10 Group Policy Editor.
After opening the Group Policy Editor, navigate to “Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Device Installation -> Device Installation Restrictions.”
Once you are here, find the “Prevent installation of devices that match any of these devices IDs” policy, and double-click on it to change its properties.
In the policy properties window, select the “Enabled” radio button, and then click on the “Show” button appearing under the Options category.
This action will open the “Show Contents” window. Here, enter all the hardware IDs you copied earlier one by one. Once filled in , click on the “OK” button to save the changes. In the future, if you have other hardware devices for which you want to avoid the driver updates, then add those hardware IDs in the same manner.
In the main window click on the “OK” button to save the changes.
Just restart your system and you are good to go. One thing to keep in mind is that Windows will still download the drivers for that hardware device, but it will not install them.
To revert back, change the policy setting to “Not Configured” or “Disabled.”
Block Driver Updates for Specific Device Using Registry Editor
If you are using the Windows 10 Home version, then you need to edit the Registry. To do that, press “Win + R,” type regedit and press the Enter button.
Here, navigate to the following location.
On the left panel, right-click on the “Restriction” key and select the option “New -> Key.” Name then new key “DenyDeviceIDs.”
Hardware Id Missing
On the right-panel right-click and select the option “New -> String Value.”
Rename the String Value as “1.”
Double-click on the newly-created value, enter one of the hardware IDs that we copied earlier and click on the “OK” button.
Since we have multiple hardware IDs for a single hardware device, we need to create three more String Values and name them in ascending order, e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. For each value enter the additional hardware ID and save it. Once you are done with everything, this is what it looks like. As you can see, I’ve created multiple string values and added the hardware IDs.
Restart your system and you are good to go. To revert back, simply delete the String Values.
Do comment below sharing your thoughts and experiences about using the above method to block driver updates to specific hardware devices in Windows 10.
Hardware Device Id Lookup
The Complete Windows 10 Customization Guide
Find Hardware
In this ebook we’ll be exploring the multitude of options to fully customize Windows 10. By the end of this ebook you’ll know how to make Windows 10 your own and become an expert Windows 10 user.