"Unknown Devices" And How To Fix Them

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It's common to have mysterious errors in Windows Device Manager, with certain components just showing up as "Unknown Devices." Why does this happen, and how can you fix it?
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[@TheInternetHelpdeskPlays]

One little thing you didn't mention, sometimes it can be a malfunction in the USB controller so moving it to a different port may help. And sometimes with newer usb3 devices, if you plug them in to a usb2 port they also have a chance to fail

[@SpaceRanger187]

Or hey im a set of headphones but im actually the cheats streamers are using

[@SpaceRanger187]

@@joshfill2513 he is right thou..usb3 woln't work in 2.0 a lot of times..and no matter how hard u simp..Linus isn't going to let u suck it

[@tanmoysd2721]

The Real MVPs are always in comment box.

[@mbsfaridi]

@@SpaceRanger187 Yeah, with the USB amp right?

[@Rosaslav]

Or even the USB cable could be the source of issues. Sometimes I had to replace the USB cable if it was too old or even too long.

[@grabo454]

I just learned a hell of a thing. The looking up of a device ID solved all my unknown, thanks!

[@K9arcade]

PCI lookup is a handy tool if you have an unnamed device that you only know the ID of. once you know what the device you can look up the driver from its vendor/company site.

[@Backware01]

I miss you, in Techquickie

[@Hyatice]

If your device is configured with Connected Standby or the OEM has otherwise blocked the access to the USB settings in power plan, there is a freeware tool called "PowerSettingsExplorer" which lets you dig in much deeper. If you don't want to do that, you can also futz around with powercfg /qh and find the setting there, then set it via command line.

[@last.journey]

You know there is a bug in KZbin If you are watching shorts and open a video from the notification and go to the comments section you can't comment on the video because the comment input field doesn't exist To fix this you close the short that was opened in the background

[@hhaste]

FUTZ

[@Ellipsis115]

kk

[@juanmondragon]

​@@last.journey there's also another bug with that same scenario. Background play won't work

[@akfjfkd]

​@@last.journeystop supporting vertical video!!!

[@BearAerospace]

This motivated me to start mucking around in my usb power settings and the bios and I think my buggy keyboard that didnt want to wake up during boot is fixed now. In addition, I realized XHCI hand-off was disabled which was probably nerfing my external ssd. Thanks Linus!

[@austang8556]

Now this is the type of Techquickie's we need. More stuff like this please!

[@Goodbye_Eri]

I agree, the old techquicke actually help me multiple times, helping someone or help me troubleshoot something quickly because i remember watching the related videos Now just mostly stuff that useless like Why game take many storage Why cpu is getting expensive

[@russellsylvia]

Unknown devices are the best in windows, 2nd to windows drivers over factory ones.

[@RickDSanchez]

“Windows drivers over factory ones” … that makes sense

[@FlyboyHelosim]

This comment makes absolutely no sense.

[@MatthewWilliamsX]

I'm guessing this is meant to say "generic" ... but generic can be a good thing.

[@Mr.Morden]

My own TLDR: For modern builds of Windows 10 and 11 if you have unknown devices then either you #1 have no internet, #2 have something blocking the install, or #3 some hardware which is really old and the vendor never bothered to release it or fix it so it works. Back in the days of Windows 95-XP there were many devices that required a very specific install procedure. Often the user had to manually dig through sub folders so that Window's "automatic" driver search found the driver. That was because the search didn't actually search, you had to tell it exactly where the driver was down to the folder with the .inf file for your very specific version of the device. This fake search feature was an absolute lie on Microsoft's part that caused so so so many tech support frustrations for me and no doubt the rest of the world.

[@nathnathn]

Theres also the rare case where despite confirming windows has the driver it wont automatically detect the correct driver and require you to manually install it. Admittedly I haven’t had that happen since the early days of win10. also only changed hardware/installed windows a few times at most since.

[@guily6669]

Thought I don't remember to ever get problems with drivers on any of my PCs with WindXP... Now windows 10 jeez so many updates kept breaking my soundcard driver and M$ eventually did a big change in sound that it broke all or most creative sound card drivers that it took quite a bit for them to release a fix and some required FW update, never had this crap with XP FFS...

[@Durayne]

Had that recently with an older xeon, that was not supposed to be attached to the internet. (special hardware) Unfortunatelly the manufacturer only had a folder of infs and there is no way in device manager to update all. In case you ever face that: pnputil /add-driver c:\oem\*.inf /install Or much fun klicking 5 times for each driver till it is installed (in my case it were ~100 unkown devices).

[@guily6669]

@@Durayne 100? Omg LOL, max I ever had was like 5 or slightly more jeez 😂

[@garcjr]

I'm on problem #3. My laptop is a 2009 HP ProBook so there's random drivers with this problem. And my PC which I built in 2013. I realize these issues and I'm planning on rebuilding soon.

[@savagepro9060]

Unknown Device, it's one of the things that recently caused Linus to go downstairs butt-naked to find out!

[@bobsquirrelking]

You said to go to the manufacturer's site after finding out what the hardware ID matches to, but you just kind of brushed over it. There really should have been a sentence or two talking about the dangers of getting drivers from unknown sources, because there are tons of sites with malware-filled drivers of all kinds. Probably 90% of the first page of search results when you put in a hardware ID will be sites you shouldn't touch with a 20 foot pole.

[@Tatosgr]

You didn't mention the most basic thing: "Check that you installed all drivers from the manufacturer, because most of the time is just a missing driver that you forgot to install". It happens to almost all users that come to my shop.

[@TigTex]

Quick tech tip, device drivers for unknown devices might show up in Optional Windows Updates. Avoid using tools that automatically install drivers as most of them might install drivers that you don't need at all or perform worse

[@Reed_Peer]

I can't be the only one who *voluntarily* updates Windows every 1-2 weeks

[@Souchirouu]

I'm a big fan of SDI (Snappy Driver Installer) an open source project that is designed specifically for finding the latest drivers and is especially good at finding drivers for old or rare stuff that might not have an official download anymore. It is also a great tool to change to a different version of a driver if you think that might be the issue.

[@Devastator0]

100% this. However I’ve heard that SDI has been malware compromised & people saying you should use SDI Origin.

[@mbsfaridi]

Nice!

[@mbsfaridi]

@@Devastator0 I was thinking about that. Amazing people can push malware with open source software.

[@TheRealLelek]

We need a new video about chipsets and their functionalities.

[@gendragongfly]

They forgot to mention that windows often installs older drivers from its own libraries. And these drivers don't always have the correct release date on them. Which can lead to the hilarious situation that windows keeps overwriting your manually installed working and up to date driver with a 10 year old driver, that was ported over from windows 7. Because it was dated last year, so it must be more up to date and thus better than a driver from the manufacturer manually installed by the user 🫤 And the only way to block this is to revoke the systems write access on the driver file(s).

[@gunswinger3110]

Oh man, this happened a few times and it's really annoying. Windows overwrote my newer AMD drivers with a super old one, which ended up causing programs to crash

[@TheGameBench]

Had someone bring me a GPU that was crashing in games. He thought the it was borked in the middle of the GPUpocalypse. The GPU was actually fine, and when he brought me the system, the GPU drivers weren't installed, or they had become corrupted... plus, the chipset drivers weren't installed either. Had he just looked in the device manager, it would have saved him $60. Granted, I cleaned up the system and made everything look nice and new while I was at it.

[@IDPVBTCIFTC]

the thumbnail showed an icon from windows vista and i just now got onto my old vista family computer just to test something with it (yes im sending this from windows vista)

[@MatthewWilliamsX]

o7

[@MageOfTheOrder]

Another good way to identify an unknown device is to grab the VEN(dor) and DEV(ice) ID's under hardware ID's in device manager. Then lookup the IDs online. Intel has a clever Vendor ID of 8086 :)

[@aphermion]

1:28

[@chefboyardeeznutsinyourmouth]

Did you even bother watching the video?

[@MageOfTheOrder]

Oops. Missed that part. Had the video on in the background while working

[@petermichaelgreen]

Intel created PCI and were one of the founding members for USB, so presumably they got to pick their vendor ID before there was a formal allocation process.

[@firstlast-tf3fq]

If Windows doesn't have a driver... Pop over to Linux... We probably have it

[@krazystuff22]

I had a third-party Xbox 360 wireless controller hub that my PC refused to recognize. Solved it by manually editing the OEM 360 hub driver and adding the hardware ID for my hub to it.

[@nasenbaer4627]

1:43 Note that Linus explicitly says "the *manufacturer's* website". Definitely pay attention to where you download a supposed driver from. There are plenty of malicious sites that try to trick you into downloading malware this way. I'm certain almost everyone who regularly watches LTT has seen such a scam site by now, but I think it still bears repeating for those who haven't yet.

[@TechX1320]

Hands down best tool I've ever used that's probably saved me thousands of hours over the years with drivers is IOBit Driver software. It does all of the stuff in this video for you

[@Roeclean]

Yoo I love Iobit Driver software

[@XenoTravis]

I remember having to code a very fragile but oddly effective way to find the STM32 chip's COM port because I dont think I could make it give more info on plug in. But I feel like there is definitely a way.

[@shashwatsharma3441]

for missing drivers I would like to suggest snappy or SDI, it's free open source and works great.

[@Imru_gamer]

Great advice, been doing this for so many years before I even used KZbin lol. I recently had an issue with a wireless dongle that I couldn't fix. the drivers for windows 10 (unfortunately) RIP so I broke it to piece (Rest in Pieces) 😂😂🤣🤣

[@AstroRamiEmad]

I've been living with the weirdest USB driver issue on Windows 10. 1. When I connect any USB device or USB storage or even a Wireless Keyboard USB connector, it is not recognised, showing a yellow warning on the device. 2. The only workaround I found is to uninstall it from Device Manager, then click on Search for New Hardware to refresh the list. 3. The irony is that, this will have that device working until I restart Windows! On Bios the devices work perfectly, I can even use my wireless keyboard without any problems (Plug-and-Play), but once I enter Windows it goes to Yellow warning ⚠️. 4. Every time I restart I need to manually stop the Windows Audiopoint Service and start it manually, and start the WLAN Auto Configuration service. Have you ever seen that? How do you think it can be solved?

[@ryekia]

Could you guys look into how razer mouses can die when updating to windows 10 or to 11. I had a razer Naga mouse that was barely a year old. It worked perfectly until I updated to 10. Then it died. Apparently 10 could kill their mouses. I read it in a forums. But razer refuses to acknowledge the problem.

[@seggee7291]

for me i’m having a problem where both my keyboards stopped working and when i tried uninstalling, updating the devices and even doing a factory reset both devices still didn’t work. when i plugged my keyboard into another device it worked just fine

[@Anubis256]

I recently experienced this with my keyboard. Before replacing a $150 piece of hardware though, I opened it up and realized one of the power connectors inside was just barely loose. Enough power for Windows to know something was plugged in but not enough for the identifier to be properly picked up.

[@LorenzJahn]

That's no possibility for me, because I had to disable driver instalations through Windows Update. And that's because Windows otherwise would kill my graphic drivers for my two graphics cards configuration. And before someone asks, I need two graphic cards because my main GPU doesn't support my three displays plus one TV and all external graphic devices hadn't worked.

Recently i had to unpack a driver to get the device to be installed by win10. It was a win7 driver but refused to run on win10. Unpacking the exe driver file i obtained the files needed to install on windows 10. Sometimes exe installer don't work on the newer os but the files they contain do work on them. Just tthe manufacturer in question doesn't feel the need to update the installer.

[@savagepro9060]

An unknown device created white circles around Linus' eyes!

[@taaktuuq]

He had cosmetic surgery, some microblading or whatever it's called, to rejuvenate the skin, he spoke about it on the WAN show.

[@janibeky]

Apsolute Genius!!! After all these years you are still my go to. Thank you for saving me yet again.

[@bloqk16]

Another problem is when a piece of Windows 7 compatible hardware won't update to Windows 10; as the manufacturer, such as HP, won't provide an updated hardware driver for Windows 10. It's a shame HP went that way. Back in the days when David Packard [the "P" in H-P] was still running things, it was remarkable how compatible the hardware was with the intro of new operating systems, such as with the original inkjet printer from 1988. That printer started off with DOS; then with Windows 3.1; then with Windows 95; and was still functioning with Windows 98 when I gave it away. Going from DOS to Windows 98 was a HUGE jump with operating systems for that H-P inkjet printer; and it still functioned. Over the past decade, good luck getting a piece of Windows 7 hardware to work with Windows 10.

[@EMINEM4760]

Funny, I had this issue last week after buying a new set of headphones. Just turned out be a bad USB cable. Always check your cables and check to see if device works on another computer :)

[@bhaskarsharma9732]

Yellow sign on firmware so can will be firmware uninstall as the yellow sign on firmware update creates a tremendous rukus to me by giving me a problem during restarting and one time machine becomes crash due to tis😢

[@i_Kruti]

I hope that this will help me , as my laptop isn't detecting my GALAXY phone....!!! ☹☹☹

[@AppleyardAndy]

Other possibilities are older devices that can't run on your os, totally unrecognisable devices (like my old usb bitcoin miners), misidentification (or malformed id's) for the device, or even out of date (or not installed) motherboard or controller drivers. Of course trying the device on another machine to see if it's the device or you pc is another option as is testing it with a live linux distribution on your own machine to see if it works.

[@FPrpg]

It can also be a faulty usb cable. I bought a usb microphone a couple of years ago, it was cheap as it had previously been returned, showed up as a unknown usb mic from the start, but worked fine otherwise. It then stopped working and I borrowed another usb mic from a friend and used the cable from the faulty mic, the replacement then acted like the other one had when I got it. Bought a new usb-a to usb-b cable, plugged in the original mic and wouldn't you know it, everything worked as intended. I'm pretty sure this is a fairly uncommon error, but thought it was worth mentioning.

[@dr.robertnick9599]

There can also be weird USB hubs, which can not take certain things, but are fine with memory sticks, for example. The USB hub of my monitor is that way. There are also unpowered hubs and everything connected there pulls their power from the one USB port the hub is connected to, which can overload it. Kinda like with powerstrips and space heaters. Those hubs sometimes have a socket for a power supply.

[@iamrobot396]

My hub caused my keyboard to be no longer detected. Same issue with my laptop as well. It was working fine when directly connected but stopped getting detected if I tried through the hub. Uhhh

[@snowdog03]

I've always had that problem. None of those Solutions work.

[@savagepro9060]

When Linus has a tan "Linus Sun-BASK-ion

[@efad3215]

Hehe

[@Jurtaani]

For me it was built in fingerprint sensor in my laptop. I recently did first reinstall on the laptop (not my first windows installation overall thought) and everything else was recognized automatically except for that sensor. For whatever reason it just gave me error 10 ( device cannot be started) error. I did even copy paste the hardware id and just found the same but newer drivers that Windows update gave me. For whatever reason HWID says that it is Synaptics WBDI fingerprint reader. But only way to get it working was to install Kensington fingerprint key driver. Windows did warn me that "this device might not work with this driver" but after clicking "install anyway" it has been working just fine. Weirdly enough even pc specialist's website where i bought this Clevo laptop, they also host that Synaptics driver that correspond with the HWID but doesn't work at all.

[@chaitanyamore8786]

Everything is okay Untill ur laptop gpu become a unknown device 😢

[@TomboRectify]

I think it was a bit too hard to get the Arduino Nano drivers on Windows, but I still got it because "I'm computer pro"(slight sarcasm). There was nowhere any signs that what you should do for that and even just what drivers to install.

[@vld_official]

uninstalling and restarting and has saved me so many headaches working in IT

[@ryan3128]

I used snappy driver installer origin to install unknown driver although i don't have issue with them

[@HazyJ28]

In my experience (every one of my 12 USB slots have devices), moving from WIN10 to 11 did not cause any device manager/driver issues. In 99.9% of cases, drivers verified for WIN10 will have no problems on 11. And yes, I had to run MBR2GPT CMD tool and also turn on Secure Boot in my BIOS.

[@CurvedSlightly]

Don't, whatever you do, check 'view hidden devices' just don't do it.

[@Imgema]

I usually fix missing drivers by installing the "optional updates" in the Windows Update window.

[@JeremyMarkel]

Some of us here have been around long enough to remember a time before plug and play when every device was unknown. And don't get me started on IRQs and interrupts!

[@gian-marco6047]

I remember as I was setting up my friends pc I had to manually install the network drivers during the oobe because it didn't get recognised properly and I couldn't get past the account creation thingy because of microsoft😅

[@GeetaDeka]

i recently upgraded to windows 11 from 10 and now my trackpad driver does not work

[@soundspark]

If you plug in a broken USB device that the port cannot fully recognize you will see a notification in the bottom right of the screen. Of course if the device is totally dead you may notice no feedback at all when plugging it in.

[@twofacedfrog]

love how linus has become so used to saying '...segway to our sponser' that when he ended it he almost said 'just like this imperfect...outro'

[@pieterspruijt2]

0:10 the exclamation point is actually black and it's in a yellow triangle

[@TMAC_burninator]

Stepping through every item in the Device Manager and checking each for a driver update is tedious. But, in rare occasions, I have had it find a driver update for a device that did NOT have the yellow exclamation point. In at least one of those rare occasions, it helped with the issue I was having. There's probably a better way to diagnose things, but if you have the patience for it, there might be times when it could help.

[@killahtomato89]

Why reboot when you can "scan for hardware changes" does the same thing

[@ExploringNew1]

0:01 what if it doesn't boot in the first place

[@EarthStarz]

Damn linus, really reaching for topics to cover.

[@mactep1]

Devices i couldn't be bothered to install the drivers for.

[@Notdeepakchopra]

i’m interested to hear your feedback on micro-needling!

[@Mr.Morden]

Beware of Amazon sales of really old hardware that is actually new old stock. That means a lack of proper drivers for modern builds of Windows.

[@MatthewWilliamsX]

Make sure your release is using an updated kernel with all the drivers baked in =P

[@-Xboum-]

as an IT specialist i find it very useful for everyone, thanks guys

[@blackkissi]

This video gives me windows XP flashbacks

[@avrel820]

Very bad idea pasting the hardware I'd because the device ID usually doesn't work anymore and will send people to bad websites it's the best way to get malicious stuff instead the best chance is to use Snappy driver installer to get the correct drivers

[@hotedits1991]

didn't snappy driver get bought out by another driver installer/manager so now it's shit. i used to use snappy driver all the time but now it is garbage.

[@YOEL_44]

I've seen new, out of the box laptops have half a docen of these, and not from small brands, things like HP, Dell, ASUS, Lenovo, then you make all the needed updates (including the ones from their propietary software) and most of the time, they're all gone.

[@TreasonsBeta]

Does anyone know how to install Raid Drivers? I've installed a intel rapid storage technology driver from my motherboards site but my machine still isn't reading my drives properly. I can see them listed as separate items disk volume but I can access them while looking through File Explorer. Is it a BIOS thing? Is it a driver thing? It's not my drives, they work fine on my other machine.

[@jamtea388]

I really liked this video! Love getting into the real concrete tips.

[@RaykoDrg]

Had a situation not too long ago with a laptop where Windows downloaded a wrong driver for some chipset bus thing, that was causing audio related devices to go 'Unknown Device' status. Spent hours researching the problem, and Realtek drivers are a complete mess to browse. It was super confusing becasue the wrong driver was for a chipset thing, not the actual sound devices, so I spent hours researching, until I just tried to revert the driver on that chipset bus definition, all sound devices came back to life after that. Not sure if it was a bug with some Intel chipsets that define additional devices like sound chips and such, it was as if the chipset driver wasn't defining the other devices properly or something. And that happened after a Windows update, which nowdays, can't be turned off on home editions. The machine was working fine before Windows decided to play dumb.

[@richmahogany1]

im running a 2015 build with an asus z97. i've always got those caution symbols in device manager for unknown device, and the fix was always to download the chipset and intel management engine updates from the asus software site. surprised windows never had these as it was a popular mobo. seemingly everything has always worked even without downloading that though so idk.

[@alexcarpenter8864]

I think a quickie about found.000 would be amazing. Focusing on what it is and how to remove it. The removing it part is what is getting me.

[@JimmyZeng]

It's very simple, stop using fat(32) in 2023.

[@marcfuchs6938]

Sometimes, as weird as it sounds, it's also the motherboard's fault. For whatever reason, some motherboards have reliable ports and unreliable ones, independent to firmware. Some ports will run flawlessly forever, others keep reconnecting and disconnecting the attached device constantly, and it's so annoying. I always need to made sure not use those ports, at least for something that is supposed to be used for longer than 30 seconds. I should look into getting USB dummy sticks, just to have the port occupied with something, that doesn't actually do anything.

[@TuxikCE]

Make a video on homegroup that disappeared.

[@MigProPlayer]

Sometimes when a device isn't working properly, you don't actually need to uninstall the whole thing and reboot the PC, you can actually just disable and enable the device in Device Manager. Works most of the time especially when you are using some peripheral and it just stops working out of nowhere.

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

"SM Bus controller" team, here ? 😂

[@thejackal007]

I appreciate that it did fetch a funny cat video.

[@DragoNate]

"You might just be plumb outta luck and... it's time for an upgrade." BISH Y U LYIN'?! I'd still be on Win7 if the SSD didn't commit self-no-longer-exist! Literally anything I tried with that thing worked, despite "requiring" Win8/10/11. Don't you dare tell me an upgrade is necessary. That's pure bull honky.

[@PickeringSamuel]

When is the Christmas album remaster?

[@nathnathn]

for reinstalling the windows drivers I believe you can also click something like rescan for devices. And i find things like turning usb selective suspend off a basic requirement as if you run your pc for long it almost always messes something up. Oldest working pc hardware “that iv tested” i have is a steering wheel controller that i need to install a decade old version of logitech’s software to use. So you might be able get a number of peripherals working with a similar tactic as that software version is just the last with compatibility. To give an idea of the age I believe the box mentions compatibility with the original XBOX.

[@skyplayss00]

Guys guys guys guys guyss it worked but not in the these video but my tech guy told me and IT WORKEDDD !!!!!!! ONLY FOR LAPTOP (MINE ASUS TUF F15) 1 JUST CLOSE ALL TABS 2 HOLD THE POWER BUTTON TO SHUT DOWN YOUR LAPTOP FOR 10 SEC ATLEAST 3 Disconnect your charging cable 4 wait for 30secs and just on it ( without using charging cable ) Thanke me later ❤️

[@FarmanaliJamali-g4z]

I have Conon DR-M160LL Scanner. Cannot find scanner. Check the power and the cables problem how to fix it please reply

[@jvmauricio107]

Or just buy a Mac

[@jesterM60]

update driver doesnt works. Still unknown device and windows says its the actual best and latest driver for this device. But there is no driver. And I I manualy conect windows path on that driver, it stops me

[@hollowsephiroth]

What happens when you get the Hardware ID USB\DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR_FAILURE? I've got a usb device that continues to disconnect and reconnect and it continues to bother me with the stupid audio ping. I've attempted to do everything from uninstalling the device/port/hub and editing settings in the registry. Any advice?

[@majinbuu19831]

For me I'm trying to connect my iPhone 13 Pro Max to my PC via USB cable and it keeps telling me USB device not recognized. I've tried multiple things on KZbin and still no go. At this point I've just about had it up to here with these fucking iPhones and they're complicated ridiculous as programs and software you would think that by now they would have made their phones and shit simple and easy like Samsung but again it's Apple. Going to stick with my Samsung s24 Ultra and sell this piece of shit

[@MartinAhlman]

So much easier than just update your ... No, you just hate Linux, sorry to say... Windows is so much easier! Just do this obvious things you tell people... Sorry, but this is just silly now... "Plum out of luck, or brain? How is this any different from NO I'M NOT GOING TO UPDATE ANYTHING when you install anything Linux, and now you tell people to jump through hoops to get Windows working? Where's that video of installing Windows, without any knowledge? I can do it for you! But you don't like that, do you.... I dare you! I bite my thumb at you!

[@fortranladwin9252]

- Windows update gives you all the drivers. WRONG. You need to pay $2300 (or more) per device (not sure if it is permenant or not) for the driver. Some companies just never bothered to upload them. - Search for the longest item in the hardware IDs. WRONG. All you need to search is the VID and PID part. In the Hardware IDs part you'll see there are several IDs, choose the shortest one with "VID_XXXX&PID_XXXX", copy it out, then search for the quoted string above only. NEVER search for the longest line as it contains toooo many Windows Setup API argunents, and may have very little results. Also, the identified VID and PID MAY NOT be accurate at all - some devices may re-enumerate their HWID after proper driver is installed. If the search for the device on Google returned 0 results, you probably want to try to only search with "VID_XXXX&PID_XXX" (don't put in the last character). It may give you a surprise. - Also, IF your device is wire-connected to your computer (usually USB) and get an unknown device or other error, try replace the cable. Sometimes it's just a bad cable.

[@Lordsun122]

Great info! Years of troubleshooting meant I knew most of those things, so it's so good to have it all in one video. Now I can send this to people when they have issues with devices rather than me having a crack!

[@AbyssionQC]

I'm a big fan of chinese "microsoft" gaming receivers that you have to manually install the drivers every week because it turns back into an unknown device all the time.

[@itsdeonlol]

Just reinstalling Windows always works every time!

[@MatthewWilliamsX]

Works better if you've partitioned your home directory. =P

[@RedStarSQD]

After installing a new asus z690 (in my case) motherboard, you get 4 unknown pcie devices and one unknown controller. Installing intel chipset driver resolves all but unknown controller device. It looks like it needs intel raid storage driver which is at Asus website. BUT, a search reveals this should be installed before the O/S. Copilot states that you can install driver after but there is a chance it will destroy the O/S. Is it safe to install this with O/S installed already???

[@kylehawton7483]

So my external hdd works fine on EVERY other pc but as soon as I plug it into mine it doesn’t work, in fact all my hdds don’t show up, I have tried just about everything I can, I’m so close to giving up lol

[@nobody7817]

For Windows... THESE DAYS? Almost EVERYTHING is "unknown". It's getting to be as bad as the 80's again! (Well, ok, not quite...but still, I thought we were FINALLY over this with "Plug and Play"!)

[@xsardas1999]

Windows i a bi... when it comes to update drivers. I have evrything turned off but sometimes it just says idk i just upgrade this driver couse freak you. Since i have old USB-COM adapter i is detecting it as "This is NOT original device!", so i have to keep old drivers from XP era for it to work but this mother freaker (win 10) just randomly updates it either way like once in a year...

[@tim3172]

I had a Texas Instruments firewire card for a solid 10 years that would give that error. It worked fine. The PC worked fine (4200+ X2, 2 whole GB of DDR4-800, and a 7900GT, wow!) TI had no drivers for it? Windows (XP) had zero idea? So.... ?

[@probablygrim]

Similar annoyances when getting my old G27 Wheel working with Win 11 when I decided ah you know what be fun, I'll dig out that wheel that even works with the PS3... Eventually resorting to using drivers windows 11 didn't like an then loosing a "security" feature just for thinking "Ah you know what will be fun". Not fun at all... Then have to remove the drivers to stop being reminded I now don't have a "Security" feature using CMD 😅. With at the end thinking this isn't even my main PC, does it even have to go online? Should I just use windows 7.....10 🤔

[@EricFaries]

As a reviewer of drawing tablets, seeing them show the "Huion Tablet" pop up made me smile too much lol I've had to see that little thing MANY times XD

[@lamebrain_0315]

LINUS can you please help with brightness setting on windows 11 and forced 2 display monitor's