Question

How to install drivers for unknown devices in Windows

Answer 1

It is common that after performing the installation or update of any version of windows, some devices marked as unknown appear in the device manager. This is because windows during the installation, the operating system has not found the correct drivers for certain hardware, such as a network card, keyboard, monitor, video card, audio card, bluetooth or USB device.

The first step will be to obtain the "Plug and Play" ID (PNPID) of the device marked as unknown.

To identify the PNPID of a device in Windows 7, right click on the " Computer " icon and select " Manage ".

In the " Computer Management " window check the option " Device Manager ". This option will show us the list of all the devices detected in our equipment.

In the list of detected devices look for the devices that are marked with a black exclamation point on a yellow background. (As the image shows).

For Windows to show us the properties of the marked devices, we must double-click on the name of the same.

In the " Properties " window select the " Details " tab and the property called " Hardware ID "

The "Id. of hardware "will show us the PNPID of our device.

In our example, the PNPID is " PCI \ VEN_8086 & DEV_27DE".

The PNPID consists of a manufacturer ID (VEN_xxxx) and a device ID (DEV_xxxx).

In our example, the manufacturer ID (VEN_xxxx) is " 8086 " and the device ID (DEV_xxxx) is " 27DE ".

Once the PNPID has been obtained, open the page http://www.pcidatabase.com/ and at the top in the " Search_vendor " section type in the manufacturer ID and execute the search.

In our example, the manufacturer ID is " 8086 ".

Choose the name of the manufacturer with the Id that we have searched for.

In our example the name of the manufacturer is " Intel Corporation ".

The page will show all the devices of the manufacturer "Intel Corporation". Now to find our device we will use the device ID (DEV_xxxx) and search function of our browser. Press the " Ctrl + f " key and in the search box type 27DE, which is the device ID (DEV_xxxx) in our example.

When searching for the device ID the page will show us the name of the device, in our example it is " Audio (ALC859) " of the brand " Realtek "

With this data we just need to type in our favorite search engine " ALC850 driver for windows 7 " and the search engine will show us the sites where we can download the appropriate driver for our device and operating system.

Another way to find the driver is to go to the manufacturer's page and look for the model. In our example http://www.realtek.com.tw/ and look for " ALC850" in the downloads or support section.
In this way we will find the indicated driver for our hardware without spending hours trying different versions or downloading unknown utilities.

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