|
|
|
User Rating: Rated by: |
Good (3.4/5) 82 user(s) |
|
|
|
|
Softpedia Editor's Review for Unknown Devices
|
Identify unknown devices installed on your system and not recognized by Windows
Written by Olivian Puha on December 1st, 2011
Installing a new hardware device can sometimes go wrong, especially when an installation disc with drivers and other needed files is not at hand. This software is designed in order to provide you with a simple means of solving such problems and identifying unrecognized devices for free.
The application is ready to run right out of the box, no installation required. As soon as you start it, Unknown Devices scans your computer and displays a complete list with all the devices currently connected or which have been plugged in at one moment.
What this tool does in case there is an unrecognized device attached to your computer is check it against some detection lists and tries to find a positive match. When an item from the list is selected you can view detailed its information by accessing the 'Device' menu. A useful function from the same menu will enable you to search the Internet for the highlighted entry.
Another feature you can find in the 'Tools' menu of Unknown Devices will allow you to quickly lookup a specific hardware ID. An important mention is that in the complete list view mode you can also see the devices that no longer exist. These entries are displayed as inactive items but the detailed info about each of them is still available.
The usage is very straightforward and to make it even easier, there are a couple of keyboard shortcuts you can use for various operations like copying a selected device details to clipboard or choosing how the items are shown in the list displayed in the main window.
Unknown Devices proves to be a useful tool and it can certainly come in handy if you come across the dreaded yellow question mark in your 'Device Manager' list. If it cannot identify the hardware, the application will at least give you a hand by facilitating the web search for drivers for those devices.
Read an in-depth analysis in our professional review for Unknown Devices
|
Unknown Devices description
|
What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]
· Added pastebin upload option. See http://www.halfdone.com/pastebin/?id=1-F94 for example
· Added Zip file support (Don't extract DeviceLists.zip). Future version will allow using zip or not
· Now works on the device lists in memory, in most cases will detect faster, expecially from older systems and slow drives (like floppies) at the expense of using more ram
· Improved Win9x detection (Thanks Cliff)
· Finally fixed the crash that would happen on shutdown
· Switched to usbdevs.txt from SIV. Future version will allow using either usbdevs.txt or usb.ids
· Added more computer details like Chipset and product key
|
|