Windows unknown device: How do I install a driver?

I'm re-purposing my Zotac Zbox Nano AD10 mini system and just installed Windows 7 on it for the first time. After installing, surprise, most of the major devices still needed drivers. I got the majority from the Zotac web site but even after running through all of those, there's an unknown device on the system.

I'm not sure how that's possible of course. Don't get me wrong, I can believe that there's no driver installed, but I find it hard to believe that anything on a system that needs a driver can be truly unknown. It's only unknown to me because Windows doesn't display any meaningful information about it that I can see in Device Manager.

Any suggestions? I know it's not the keyboard nor mouse as I've unplugged them and let device manager refresh to see that the "unknown" device still shows up.

Honestly, people wonder why on top of everything else Macs carry a premium price. A typical generic PC system when adding Windows is like buying a car without wheels and tires. Which requires very specific wheels and tires that you have to go searching for. On foot. With a limp. Pulling a wheelbarrow. With one hand.

Blindfolded.

And with a dreadful need to take a...

Right click on the device and find the PCI or USB IDs to find out what piece of hardware it is. I don't have a Win7 machine here but it's on the "Details" tab when you open the device in Device Manager in XP.

As for your Apple rant - well yes that's why you pay a premium. Most people are happy to deal with such minor minor annoyances and get something with the same performance but cheaper and more customisable. Wait, why are you running Windows? Why not use a Mac if they are so much better?

Perhaps this is another area of technology you can fix?

Under the view options in Device manager, there is also a way to change it into a device tree. That way you can get an idea of the unknown device is hanging off a USB, PCI, or some other bus.

This is similar to the various tools in Linux and OS X to show the device tree.

This machine was originally intended to run a stripped down and specific purpose Linux distribution (Debian installed pretty easily/quickly). It's being repurposed to run SageTV in client mode now - which requires Windows for the type of license I own and the plugins I need to install.

The connection tree is definitely more useful in this case. But device manager in general is just so obtuse. Argh.

Now with the power of Google I've found it's an Atheros BT part. Why I don't see the name "Atheros" listed in Device Manager is beyond me, nor the name of the part. And why Windows wasn't able to find the driver when I told it to search a path where I'd unzipped every driver for this machine, which does include the BT driver.

Honestly, the process I just went through to put Windows on this machine is not something the typical consumer can accomplish. Or will even attempt. Zotac, the manufacturer could make this a lot more consumer friendly by packaging every single one of the required drivers into a single installer available from their web site. There may have been one included on CD/DVD that came with the computer, but that would be over a year old at this point and who knows where that disc is. Not to mention the computer doesn't have an optical drive in the first place.

Because Windows doesn't know what it is: that's what "unknown device" means.

That's odd because USB devices have a text-based manufacturer string that the OS (or any USB probing software) should be able to access. Devices usually also have a product text string too. Windows doesn't show me either of these and even makes looking at the VID/PID more cumbersome that it needs to be. But on the off chance that this particular device was missing its text strings, doesn't Windows have a somewhat recent USB VID lookup table?

I've had a little bit of help from this tool in the past...

Another oddity. Windows update is showing driver updates that are for versions OLDER than what I have already installed directly from manufacturer resources. Ugh. These seem to have disappeared a bit later in the day after a few more restarts and launching Windows Update a few times. Nice.

I decided to see just how CRAP device manager really is. So I installed one of my own USB IR receivers which is fully supported in Windows as a WMC Transceiver. I can't find any VID/PID info. No strings associated with the hardware at all. The only thing I can see if that it's HID and MS software details. Even selecting "Manufacturer" in Details gives me back "Microsoft" - the maker of the driver, not the hardware.

Really useful.

I'd be interested to know what if any driver issues you had with the Debian install on the same hardware?

I don't think I had any issues with Debian 6. But at the time I could not get anything based on Fedora to install. The situation may be different today with new drivers and new uEFI on the box.

I find that interesting given the come (mis?)conception that driver support in Linux is poor compared to Windows, which certainly hasn't been my experience. Sorry for taking the thread off topic.

I had to use the package manager to get a few things, but I don't recall having to go out and manually download any drivers directly from vendor web sites.

That's been the case for Linux for quite some time now. Very very good built-in drivers for core and common hardware.

Where things get more sticky is with oddball consumer gadgets from non-mainstream manufacturers. Those can be hit (more often than not) or miss (not an uncommon event).

Cheers

Not to mention that support for new hardware is inherently laggy. That's not a knock. Just a realistic appreciation for the logistics involved.