Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Finding missing devices in Device Manager

Device Manager doesn't like to show you devices that are no longer connected to the computer. This can cause trouble with devices like Network Cards that have IP addresses or gateways assigned to them. Here's how to show them in Device Manager so you can remove them:

  1. Start command prompt
  2. Type in: set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
  3. Type: start devmgmt.msc
  4. Now go to the view menu and select "Show Hidden Devices"
  5. Expand the correct branch in Device Manager and you should see all the unconnected devices
  6. Uninstall them to your heart's content
This information was thankfully gained from Microsoft's Knowledgebase at:
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3 comments:

  1. François PépinDecember 28, 2009 at 12:11 PM

    Just did this on my computer as I was having some USB keyboard issues. There were probably over a hundred disconnected items in my Device Manager under USB. I went ahead and uninstalled them. Don't know yet if this fixed my keyboard issue.

    ReplyDelete
  2. François PépinDecember 28, 2009 at 12:17 PM

    Yep, that seemed to fix my USB keyboard issue. Windows kept saying there was a problem with the USB device that it may have malfunctioned. Turns out it was just the drivers cached by Windows. I'm now typing happily from my "malfunctioned" USB keyboard.

    ReplyDelete
  3. François PépinDecember 28, 2009 at 12:28 PM

    Ok, one more note on this:
    if you go to "View" and select "View devices by connection" you'll see almost only unconnected devices at the bottom of the list.

    ReplyDelete

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