15

I reinstalled windows on a new machine and the drivers are not present for the product network card.

When in device manager all I get is the question mark and I am unable to figure out the actual name of the vendor or model of the card. This is making my search to find the correct driver hard.

Anyone know how I to find out more about the hardware that does not have drivers?

nixda
  • 26,823
  • 17
  • 108
  • 156
Duncan Krebs
  • 261
  • 1
  • 3
  • 7

2 Answers2

16

Use PCI database (online website)

  1. go to the device manager
  2. open the properties of the unknown device
  3. click on details → Hardware IDs
  4. extract the vendor ID and the device ID like shown in the screenshot

  5. search on the PCI database for the vender and database ID.
    The database is regularly updated by users. Scroll down Intel's page as an example.
    The results will show a driver name which can be googled

    enter image description here

Use Unknown Devices (portable offline tool)

The portable tool even shows old drivers which are normally only visible if you type SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1 in an elevated CMD prompt before opening the device manager.

enter image description here

Use DriverIdentifier (offline tool with online database)

Install it or extract it with UniExtract if you need a portable version. It will scan your drivers and compare them with its online database.

enter image description here

Kevin Panko
  • 7,346
  • 22
  • 44
  • 53
nixda
  • 26,823
  • 17
  • 108
  • 156
  • My driver hardware ID shows up as ms_ndsiwanbh and is not found on the site you recommended –  Jun 17 '13 at 08:43
  • @Yvette Sorry to hear that. I already had the same issue with a laptop. What exact PC/laptop and what operating system do you use? It seems to be a WAN miniport network driver – nixda Jun 17 '13 at 10:35
  • Samsung 64 bit i7 - windows 8 pro thnx Nixda –  Jun 17 '13 at 10:37
  • 1
    @Yvette I guess you mean a Samsung laptop. You need the exact model number. Something like "Samsung Series 9 NP900X3A-A02US". Have you tried all recommended network drivers from their [support page?](http://www.samsung.com/us/support/) – nixda Jun 17 '13 at 10:58
  • thnx for yr help nixda where would i find the model number (apart from on the bottom of the laptop- which I can't read) thnx –  Jun 17 '13 at 11:33
0

I needed the sound and video drivers for a unknown motherboard of a computer I was fixing and I found a solution here: http://www.kmbytes.com/blog/2014/07/23/how-to-check-motherboard-drivers/

It is a little program that has to be installed and couple of button clicks. Worked like a charm for me. Cheers!

Danny
  • 1