March 11, 2009 at 07:41Search for drivers for unknown devices in windows
I think you have often met a situation where you could not find drivers for some devices in Windows. In the device manager, these glands are proudly called "Unknown device." I want to demonstrate to you my method of solving such situations and two stories of its successful application.
I must say right away that I know the Windows platform poorly, therefore the solution to such a problem can be much simpler - just purchase a program that will tell you everything about the hardware of your computer.
So, the first story. Once upon a time I purchased an IrDA-USB adapter to communicate with a Nokia phone and it worked with Windows XP. Time passed, a laptop with Windows Vista appeared, and it was necessary to copy data from the phone for safety. And then it turned out that the adapter does not work with the drivers that came on the disk. On the manufacturer’s website (Tekram), a fresh driver for Vista was not found, but at the same time, the adapter worked fine under Linux, which I used.
Everyone knows that the plastic shell of many devices with a proud manufacturer’s logo actually hides a chip that is used in hundreds of such devices. Linux does not look at the logo, Linux works with chips, and the output of dmesg and lspci, lsusb clearly shows where to look for drivers.
So, I inserted the adapter into the Linux machine and looked at the output of lsusb:
On the manufacturer’s website in a couple of minutes I found the required driver for Windows Vista, which worked.
The following example is an HP ML110G5 server. HP supports installing Windows Server 2003 for this series, and nothing more. At the same time, the servers were taken under a very crooked system, which, other than under Windows XP, did not start. As you know, there were no drivers for Windows XP on the HP website, and technical support for the second time explicitly expressed that such a bundle is not supported.
And again Linux, namely Slax, helped us, lspci deduced the name of the chipset, the drivers for which we successfully downloaded from the Intel site.
In general, Linux successfully helps work with Windows networks, and these two cases demonstrate only one small possibility of application. For example, it’s more convenient for me to deploy new computers on the network using partimage or dd, since I don’t think it is possible to use unlicensed software, and buying Norton Ghost when I can do without it is a waste of employer funds.
Update: in the comments you can find other solutions to this particular problem.
I must say right away that I know the Windows platform poorly, therefore the solution to such a problem can be much simpler - just purchase a program that will tell you everything about the hardware of your computer.
So, the first story. Once upon a time I purchased an IrDA-USB adapter to communicate with a Nokia phone and it worked with Windows XP. Time passed, a laptop with Windows Vista appeared, and it was necessary to copy data from the phone for safety. And then it turned out that the adapter does not work with the drivers that came on the disk. On the manufacturer’s website (Tekram), a fresh driver for Vista was not found, but at the same time, the adapter worked fine under Linux, which I used.
Everyone knows that the plastic shell of many devices with a proud manufacturer’s logo actually hides a chip that is used in hundreds of such devices. Linux does not look at the logo, Linux works with chips, and the output of dmesg and lspci, lsusb clearly shows where to look for drivers.
So, I inserted the adapter into the Linux machine and looked at the output of lsusb:
Bus 007 Device 002: ID 9710:7780 MosChip Semiconductor MS7780 4Mbps Fast IRDA AdapterOn the manufacturer’s website in a couple of minutes I found the required driver for Windows Vista, which worked.
The following example is an HP ML110G5 server. HP supports installing Windows Server 2003 for this series, and nothing more. At the same time, the servers were taken under a very crooked system, which, other than under Windows XP, did not start. As you know, there were no drivers for Windows XP on the HP website, and technical support for the second time explicitly expressed that such a bundle is not supported.
And again Linux, namely Slax, helped us, lspci deduced the name of the chipset, the drivers for which we successfully downloaded from the Intel site.
In general, Linux successfully helps work with Windows networks, and these two cases demonstrate only one small possibility of application. For example, it’s more convenient for me to deploy new computers on the network using partimage or dd, since I don’t think it is possible to use unlicensed software, and buying Norton Ghost when I can do without it is a waste of employer funds.
Update: in the comments you can find other solutions to this particular problem.