How to Identify and Install Unknown Device Drivers On Windows 11/10

How to Identify and Install Unknown Device Drivers On Windows 10/11

If you’re mucking around with a new Windows installation, you’re probably going to run into driver headaches.

No matter whether you’re installing a fresh copy of Windows on a freshly built rig or simply upgrading your PC to a new version of Windows, the OS fails to properly identify all of the hardware connected to the system more often than not. I typically like to download drivers for all of the major components in a PC before I even begin an OS installation, but inevitably a motherboard will have an obscure controller on-board or the system will have a non-descript add-in card that Windows doesn’t recognize.

Issues resolved in this tutorial:
unknown device drivers for windows 7
how to identify and install unknown device drivers on windows 7/8/10
how to identify and install unknown device drivers on windows 10
how to identify and install unknown device drivers on windows 11

Unknown devices show up in the Windows Device Manager when Windows can’t identify a piece of hardware and provide a driver for it. An unknown device isn’t just unknown — it’s not functioning until you install the right driver.

Windows can identify most devices and download drivers for them automatically. When this process fails — or if you disable automatic driver downloads — you’ll have to identify the device and hunt the driver down on your own.

This tutorial will apply for computers, laptops, desktops, and tablets running the Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems (Home, Professional, Enterprise, Education) from all supported hardware manufactures, like Dell, HP, Acer, Asus, Toshiba, Lenovo, Huawei and Samsung.