Support

Introduction

This page serves as a basic how-to guide to using this tool. I can't account for every possible case that you may come across, but i'll do my best to cover the general situations.

unknowndevices is a tool designed for use by support technicians in diagnosing an "unknown device" in Windows Device Manager. It does not automatically download drivers.

The application works by reading the Windows Registry and searching for the hardware that Windows knows about (and generally speaking, has drivers for). The registry contains two special pieces of information for every hardware part in the system, even hardware it does not have drivers for ('unknown device's). This information is a numeric code that represents the manufacturer and the hardware id for the device. There is an online database, http://www.pcidatabase.com/ that provides a very handy lookup service for vendor and hardware ids. This tool has a copy of a fairly recent version of the database that that site uses (with permission of course) and provides a convenient interface for comparing the two sources of information.

How to use the tool

Download the latest version. I'd suggest whatever the beta version is because it is generally better than whatever the stable version is. Unzip the .zip file on the target computer (or a thumb drive) and run the update utility (if you have internet access). Launch the tool and compare the list of devices to the devices in your task manager. When you click on a device in the tool, it will expand and show you the information from both the windows registry and the database. The 'Unknown Device' will generally be the device that does not have any information under the Windows data.

If you happen to find a piece of hardware for which neither Windows nor the database contain information, congratulations! I would suggest googling for both the hardware id and the manufacturer id and trying to find a driver that works. You can also compare the list of known hardware in your system against the devices shown in the device manager. Chances are, if you are here, there is a particular part of your system that is not working correctly, e.g. no sound. Use clues like that to help you narrow down the results. When you locate and identify the offending piece of hardware, please contact either myself or the fine folks at http://www.pcidatabase.com/ to help keep the database current.

Troubleshooting

Now, supposing that you've done all of the above and something strange is happening that I didn't describe above, you are in the right place. The set of steps I would suggest are as follows.

• Re-read the above instructions and make sure you followed them correctly
• Run the updater to see if the database got corrupted
• Download an older (or newer) version of the tool and repeat the above steps
• If all else fails, or if you just plain don't have time to mess around with it, click on the file a bug button (only in the beta version atm) and please send me a bug report. I take every bug report seriously and I will make an effort to help resolve any issue with the tool and your system.
• Contact me at metiscus@gmail.com with any issues you find. Screen shots are always welcome.

Bugs

• There are no known bugs at this time
• If you find a bug with the program, please add it to the issue tracker AND send me an email at metiscus@gmail.com. Many people posted issues but I did not find out about them until 2011.