How to Identify Unknown Devices in Windows Device Manager

You try to fix a driver problem in Device Manager and are greeted by a yellow exclamation next to "PCI Simple Communications Controller". It gives you no manufacturer information and describes nothing. Another piece of hardware with a name only a programmer could love. Does this sound like you? Every Windows user has to deal with this sooner or later. An OS reinstall, a driver pack for the motherboard that forgets to include a chipset driver, or a touchpad that decides to identify itself no longer or operate, and we are left with few entries listed as "Unknown Device" under "Other Devices".

📷 Identifying Unknown Devices in Windows Device Manager

But there's some good news? You don’t have to guess. You can look in the system directly. Windows can tell you what all your unknown devices are, as long as you know the secret code. The secret code is a Hardware ID, and once you learn this secret code, figuring out unknown hardware is a trivial problem.

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This guide will tell you every method I have to offer, from a direct built-in Windows method, to third-party free tools, to a command line trick, that will help you identify the unknown device, track down the correct driver, and get rid of the yellow exclamation mark for good.

Why Does Windows Show "Unknown Device"?

Analyzing the cause is always helpful before applying the popular fixes. When a Windows user encounters an "Unknown Device" label, at least one of the following has likely happened in the background:

• No matching driver is installed.
• The driver pack installed an incomplete or generic driver.
• The device uses a chipset that is proprietary to the device, a proprietary driver, or a chipset that is rarely used.
• It uses a bus that Windows has no generic support for.

Laptops are absolutely notorious devices in this situation. What should be easily identifiable components, like a fingerprint reader or a light sensor, continuously get marked as an "Unknown Device" and require installing a specific driver pack available only via the OEM or manufacturer.

Step 1: Open the Device Manager

Although there are several ways to open the Device Manager, I prefer to open it in this way:

📷 List of unknown devices in the Windows Device Manager

1. Press the Win + X key and click the Device Manager option from the context menu.
2. Or, press the Win + R key and type devmgmt.msc in the text box. Hit the Enter key to open.
3. Under the category Other Devices, you can find a list of unknown devices. On your system, categories like Unknown Devices or System Devices may also exist, where you can find unrecognized devices.

These devices are marked with a yellow exclamation mark.

Step 2: Find the Hardware ID

Hardware ID is a unique string added to every piece of hardware by the manufacturer. This ID helps Windows identify the manufacturer and the chipset associated with the hardware.

📷 Hardware IDs in Windows Device Manager

How to View a Device's Hardware ID

1. Right-click on the unknown device entry and select the Properties option from the context menu.
2. Switch to the Details tab.
3. In the Property section, select Hardware Ids from the dropdown menu.
4. You'll see one or more strings (hardware IDs) in the Value section. Here's an example:

   PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A36D&SUBSYS_86541462&REV_F0
   PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A36D&SUBSYS_86541462
   PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A36D&CC_0C0330
   PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A36D&CC_0C03

Interpreting Hardware IDs

Here's how you can decode these hardware IDs to make sense of these cryptic strings.

Code	Meaning	Example
VEN_	Vendor ID: Manufacturer identification	VEN_8086 → Intel
DEV_	Device ID: Specific chip/component identification	DEV_A36D → An Intel controller
SUBSYS_	Subsystem ID: Generally identifies the exact product/board	86541462 → Motherboard identifier
REV_	Chip's revision number	F0 → Denotes hardware revision
CC_	Class Code: Type of device (e.g., network, audio, USB, etc)	0C03 → A USB controller

Note: If it's a USB device, the 'Hardware ID' may look like USB\VID_046D&PID_C52B. In this case, VID denotes vendor ID, and PID denotes product ID.

Once you have the following codes, viz., VEN_ or (VID_), DEV_ or (PID_), you can identify the device accurately.

Step 3: Search the Vendor and Device ID for Identifying Hardware

As already captured in the previous step, you have your two identifier numbers, viz., Vendor ID and Device ID. Now you need to find out the make and models of the hardware that these IDs are associated with.

Top Recognised Vendor IDs

Vendor ID	Manufacturer
8086	Intel
10DE	NVIDIA
1002 / 1022	AMD
14E4	Broadcom
168C	Qualcomm Atheros
10EC	Realtek
045E	Microsoft
046D	Logitech
04F2	Chicony (common webcam maker)
0BDA	Realtek (USB devices)
8087	Intel (USB controllers, Bluetooth)

If you have recognized the vendor ID, half the battle is already won. Recognizing the Device ID is a bit tricky because manufacturers often release thousands of chip variants for some of their products.

Best Online Sources to Identify Hardware IDs

1. PCI Database: Here, copy and paste the VEN_ and DEV_ values (grabbed from previous steps) in the provided text boxes, and it will give you the correct chip name. It is most popular for searching PCI/PCIe devices, which include chipsets, device controllers, and network cards.
2. The USB ID Repository: If you are looking to find a USB device, this is the most complete USB vendor/device database. Almost every Windows USB hardware ID is present in this database.
3. Google Search with Full Hardware ID String: Before using the above sources, try pasting the complete Hardware ID (e.g., PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A36D...) in the Google search box. Most of the time, you will get a link to a forum or a vendor's official page where a description of the hardware device will be available.

Step 4: Use Built-In Windows Tools for Grabbing Hardware IDs

Windows has several other ways to find Hardware IDs. Let's take a look at them.

Use System Information (msinfo32)

You can use this powerful Windows tool to find Hardware IDs of devices.

📷 Other ways to get the Hardware ID of a device

1. Press the Win + R key and type msinfo32 in the text box. Hit the Enter key to open this system information tool.
2. Expand the Components section and select the devices, further expanding the tree as per your needs. Here, you'll find tons of information about devices, which includes Hardware IDs as well.

Use PowerShell to List All Devices with Their Hardware IDs

Another way to get devices' Hardware IDs is through the PowerShell commands. Through it, you can extract Hardware IDs of multiple devices in one go.

📷 Extract Hardware IDs through the PowerShell commands

Get-PnpDevice | Where-Object `
{ $_.Status -eq "Error" -or $_.Status -eq "Unknown" } `
| Format-Table -AutoSize

It displays the Hardware IDs of all the problematic devices in a tabular format.

Get-PnpDevice -PresentOnly | Where-Object { $_.Status -ne "OK" } `
| ForEach-Object {
    $_.FriendlyName
    (Get-PnpDeviceProperty -InstanceId $_.InstanceId `
    -KeyName "DEVPKEY_Device_HardwareIds").Data
    "----"
}

This one displays full Hardware IDs of all the problematic devices that can be directly copied for querying online device databases.

Use the Command Prompt with driverquery

This command retrieves the list of device drivers on your system. It's handy when searching for updated drivers or looking to restore the old one for the problematic device.

driverquery /v /fo csv > drivers.csv

The command saves the driver list in .csv format. You can view it in Microsoft Excel.

Step 5: Use Free Third-Party Identification Tools

If you are not interested in manually searching the Hardware IDs and device drivers, some free and user-friendly 3rd-party tools can do the job for you. Let's see them!

User Friendly Solutions

• Unknown Device Identifier (UDI): This portable tool scans your system, lists all unknown devices, and has links to available drivers.
• Snappy Driver Installer Origin (SDIO): Identifies hardware and offers a huge offline database of drivers, which will be downloaded automatically.
• CPU-Z / HWiNFO: These tools will not help find unknown devices. However, they will help determine what hardware is present by detailing the chipsets and motherboards.

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Honest Take: Unknown Device Identifier is my preferred tool when it comes to finding Hardware IDs through a 3rd-party tool. If it is unable to find a driver, start using manual Hardware ID lookups. These automated tools are very helpful, but can miss small components from other manufacturers. The manual lookup will not be fast, but it will be correct every time.

Step 6: Pair the Device with the Right Driver

Once you have identified the device, you can now get it working through one of the following methods.

Option A: Windows Update

1. Open the Device Manager and right-click on the problematic device.
2. Go to the Driver → Search automatically for drivers option to install the best available driver for this device.
3. Windows checks both offline and online (Windows Update) for the correct driver.

This approach only works if the hardware is a well-known and common device. But, if it's OEM-specific niche hardware that's not common, there are high chances this method won't work.

Option B: Manufacturer’s Official Website

This is the best option for laptops and prebuilt desktops.

1. Go to your Laptop/Motherboard Manufacturer’s support page.
2. Search with your laptop's exact model number. You can find it on a sticker on the bottom of the laptop or through the msinfo32 tool.
3. Download the chipset driver pack. This is the best option as it resolves several "Unknown Device" entries because it includes SMBus controllers, management engine interfaces, and other low-level drivers.

Option C: Install using the Hardware ID directly

If you have the drivers downloaded, but Windows is blocking the installation because it "does not match", you can enable a match manually.

1. Right-click the unknown device and select the Update Driver option.
2. Select Browse my computer for drivers.
3. Select Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer.
4. Thereafter, select the Have Disk option and navigate to the folder containing the .inf driver file.

Caution: Unless you are sure about the driver file, do not install it. If it matches the Hardware ID, go ahead with the installation. Force-installing the wrong driver file may result in malfunctioned device.

Conclusion

Identifying "Unknown Devices" on your Windows system is not that hard. All you need is the skill to extract and decode Hardware IDs of problematic devices.

There are several ways to get the Hardware IDs of these devices. And, once you have the Vendor ID and Device ID in hand, finding the correct device driver for the same is not difficult at all.

In the future, if you ever see an "Unknown Device" in the Device Manager, simply grab its Hardware ID and download its matching device driver from the internet.

Image Credit: All screenshots and image alterations by Rajeev Edmonds/FreshTechTips