The case of the missing driver - part 3

Yesterday we learned how to identify unknown hardware.  In today's post we'll talk about finding and installing the driver for that hardware.  Let's look more closely at a hardware identification string we found.

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27D0&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_01

This string tells me 5 things.  In order from left to right they are:

1. The hardware is located on the PCI bus.


2. The vendor/manufacture number is 8086.


3. The device identifier is 27D0.


4. The subsystem identifier is 00000000.


5. The revision number is 01.

Again, hardware identification strings vary greatly, but most of them look like the above.  Let's focus on the vender number.  Surf on over to pcidatabase.  Enter your vendor number into the "vendor" field and click search.  This will tell you who the manufacture is of that hardware.  In my case 8086 is Intel.  Click on the vendors name and it will bring up a list of known device identifiers.  Search for your device identifier in this list.  I'll tell you right now this list is not complete, so you may not find it.  But if you do find it, it will give you some info about the device such as a friendly name and if you're lucky a link to the driver.

Assuming you still need the driver, you have the manufacture's name and hopefully the device's friendly name.  You can now visit that manufactures web page and download the driver.

If after all this you're still unable to find the correct driver, you can try putting the raw hardware identification string into a Google and see what you get.  A lot of times you get lucky, but this is no guarantee.

There you have it, how to identify hardware and find the correct driver.  Once I learned this process I've never had hardware I couldn't find a driver for.  Hopefully you enjoy as much success as I have.