If youve ever looked at the internal components of your computer, then youll know that its relatively easy to identify the main hardware devices such as the hard disk, graphics card, CPU, and so forth. However, when it comes to finding out who made a particular device, then visual inspection can result in a red herring. The reason for this is that some generic hardware is re-labelled by the company that sells it. So, if youre looking for a hardware driver using an incorrect vendors name then this will result in you downloading the wrong driver and potentially causing problems in Windows. By reading this article, youll discover what lurks inside your PC, who made it, and how to source the correct drivers. Well also focus on how to identify unknown devices and how the free software tools on this website can help you to easily perform tasks that would otherwise be very time-consuming, or even impossible!
Category: Hardware
Issue: 2010 Issue 2 March/April
Operating Systems: XP, Vista, 7
Article Reference: H13