Finding the Right Driver for an Unknown Device
If you’ve ever installed Microsoft Windows on a PC, chances are you’ve seen it in your Device Manager: the dreaded “Unknown Device” item. What do you do to help Windows “know” what that device is? For that matter, how can YOU know what it is? Let’s take a look.
The “Plug and Play” architecture used on most modern Windows PCs makes it possible for Windows to recognize potentially millions of different devices and automatically load the correct drivers to make them work. Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect system. If Windows itself doesn’t contain the correct driver for a device it has identified, and if there isn’t a suitable driver somewhere on your system, that device will often show up in your Device Manager as an “Unknown Device”.
The first thing you should try when confronted with such a device is to locate all the driver discs that you have for the hardware in your system. Then, open the Device Manager, right-click on the “Unknown” device and select “Update Driver” from the context menu. Point Windows at the various driver discs you have and see if one of them recognizes this particular hardware. If you’re lucky, you’ll find the right driver, the device will be recognized, and you’ll be finished. But what if that doesn’t work? How are you supposed to know what this mystical device is if even Windows XP can’t figure it out?