Indentifying an Unknown Device in Device Manager

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Guest

I was curious to see if anyone had a suggestion about trying to find out some
way of identifying a device's name. I have an unknown device listed in my
Device Manager, but I cannot figure out what it is. It does not appear to be
anything I am in need of; it’s not a firewire, USB, network, wireless, sound,
or display adapter and all of the my hardware devices work properly. I did
think that it could have been a touchpad driver since I don’t have the nice
Synaptics manager that I used to have when I had XP installed, but I am
unsure and I think I created some problems for myself last time by trying to
install some drivers for devices that I wasn't positive that I needed or that
were incompatible with Vista.
 
If you click in device manager on the unknown device and open up the drivers
tab, you do have a tab "Detail" in there you will find a "Acpi/PNP???????.."
(the ??? represents a number) with a number copy that and type it into a
search engine, you will have a big chance to see what type of device it is
and sometimes also the brand so you can go the the mfgr's website to pick up
some drivers, if there are drivers for it!.

Ko.
 
I have a "game adapter input, (Joystick, etc.)" that is not supported by
VISTA that shows up as an unknown device.
 
PaulB,

Microsoft removed support for these types of devices, in favor of USB
connected devices.
 
Very interesting. I did what you said and after a quick search found a post
that helped identify the exact device that was causing the problem. I found
instructions to manually point Vista to the location of the driver and voila,
it installed in a heartbeat and now all of my devices are configured
correctly. Thanks a million guys.
 
prodonjs said:
I was curious to see if anyone had a suggestion about trying to find out some
way of identifying a device's name. I have an unknown device listed in my
Device Manager, but I cannot figure out what it is. It does not appear to be
anything I am in need of; it’s not a firewire, USB, network, wireless, sound,
or display adapter and all of the my hardware devices work properly. I did
think that it could have been a touchpad driver since I don’t have the nice
Synaptics manager that I used to have when I had XP installed, but I am
unsure and I think I created some problems for myself last time by trying to
install some drivers for devices that I wasn't positive that I needed or that
were incompatible with Vista.
Click to expand...
 
koze said:
If you click in device manager on the unknown device and open up the drivers
tab, you do have a tab "Detail" in there you will find a "Acpi/PNP???????.."
(the ??? represents a number) with a number copy that and type it into a
search engine, you will have a big chance to see what type of device it is
and sometimes also the brand so you can go the the mfgr's website to pick up
some drivers, if there are drivers for it!.

Ko.
Click to expand...
 
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