Find Drivers Through Hardware Id
Customers ask from time to time how they can pull down driver files that they see on the Windows Update site individually without the need to use the Windows Update Agent internally within Windows. This can be done using the Windows Update Catalog site located here: You can use the site to pull down not only driver files on Windows Update but individual hotfixes as well. For drivers, I have found that there are two methods that are effective. The first is to try to use the manufacturer and model name of the device that you’re looking for. This works a good amount of the time but it will depend on how the driver is actually listed on the Windows Update Catalog as to whether or not you would get a good result. For example, a co-worker of mine was looking for a driver recently for his Belkin wireless NIC. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the device name so searching for this by manufacturer yields the following result: As you can see from the screencap (hopefully), there are hundreds of drivers listed for Belkin wireless devices.
Using PowerShell to find drivers for. Like the PCI Database or Windows Update to find the actual driver. Which you can then use to step through your hardware.
So, what’s a better way to narrow this down? Use the PNP ID for the device. You can find this in the Windows INF setupapi.dev.log on Windows Vista and Windows 7 based installations. Promaster 7000m Flash Manual Every Sur.
In this case, the PNP ID was prefixed with USB VID_050D&PID_945A. So, searching for this, we get the following: So, this narrows the results from hundreds to tens, and we can further eliminate devices based on the OS we’re looking to find information about.
Many people don’t even know about the Download Center, let alone that you can utilize the PNP IDs of devices to find the drivers for those devices. Well now you know --Joseph. The policy setting 'Turn off Windows Update device driver searching' description states: 'This policy specifies whether Windows searches Windows Update for device drivers when no local drivers for a device are present.' Ok, but if drivers *are* present, they can/will be updated even if this setting is enabled. Also in the description: 'NOTE: This setting is replaced by 'Specify Driver Source Search Order' in 'Administrative Templates/System/Device Installation' on newer versions of Windows.' So if one has a video card and the very recent reference driver from AMD/Nvidia only has a two-part hardware Id match for it, it is possible that WU could replace the driver with something older, and possibly less functional, no matter what Group Policy settings are in place.
Is that a 'good thing'?
Article Summary: How to Find Drivers for Devices Using a Hardware ID • How to Find Drivers for Devices Using a Hardware ID 1. How to Find Drivers for Devices Using a Hardware ID The hardware id for a device in Windows can be found in the Windows Device Manager. To check the hardware id for a device, follow these steps: • Open the Device Manager from the Control Panel. You can also type 'devmgmt.msc' at the Run option in the Start menu.
• In the Device Manager, right-click the device, and select Properties in the popup menu. • Select the Details tab. • Select the Hardware Ids in the dropdown list. There can be multiple hardware ids for a device. The top one is the most specific identifier, and going down, the identifiers are more generic.
The reason this is done is to allow a device driver to be selected based on a match to any of these hardware identifiers. The hardware manufacturer in this example is Realtek, which is identified by VEN_10EC.
Solutions Grade 6 Ebook Download. A hardware ID is typically in the form of &&. The Vendor ID is indicated by the four characters after VEN_.
The Device ID is indicated by the four characters after DEV_. The hardware ID is available for devices in which drivers were already installed, for unknown devices and not recognized devices. You can also use the hardware ID for a device to find drivers for that device by searching the Windows Update Catalog by clicking this. If you did not find device driver in windows Update Catalog, you can search for the Device ID to find the drivers through any search engine.