Find device by Hardware ID in Device Manager?

Question

Is there a way to search through the Windows 10 Device Manager, e.g. by Hardware ID? (Or is there another tool that can do this?)

I know (part of) the Hardware ID of a device I have, e.g. it starts with "USB\VID_1C88". My suspicion is that this device is causing trouble, so I want to uninstall all drivers associated with it.

Solution 1

There are websites, I've listed at the bottom, that archive H/W ID's so that COULD provide insight as well as an app. nirsoft DevManView & USBDeview can do this under a column called 'Instance ID'. Apparently USBDeview can show historical devices that are disconnected as well. I don't know nirsoft, his tools are just my go to :)

• http://www.linux-usb.org/usb-ids.html
• https://pci-ids.ucw.cz/
• https://www.pcilookup.com/
• https://devicehunt.com/

Solution 2

I used a tool called Hardware Identify . It lists all installed hardware devices on the computer and displays information about each device. You could check the device name by Hardware ID like this below:

Solution 3

There is a nice little tool from Microsoft that lets you list all devices called Devcon (Device Console). In combination with Powershell it is quite easy to identify devices e.g.

 devcon64.exe hwids * | Select-String "YOUR HARDWARE ID" -Context 5

Devcon is available as portable app on Chocolatey

Comments

[BlackShift]

That is certainly a useful tool. It only shows devices actually attached though. So any disconnected USB device will not show up, even if the drivers are installed :-(.

[BlackShift]

DevManView is perfect! It allows sorting on HW ID, shows disconnected devices, and can uninstall drivers. Thanks for nirsoft!