How to Use Device Manager to Troubleshoot Windows 10

Windows Device Manager is an important troubleshooting tool. It displays all your installed hardware and allows you to see which one has a problem, manage their drivers, and even disable specific piece of hardware.

How it works almost the same as Windows 8.1

  You only need to use the Device Manager when your computer hardware problems and managing its drivers, but it is important system tool that you should know how to use.

Open the Device Manager

The easiest way to open the Device Manager in each version of Windows is to press Windows Key + R, type devmgmt.msc, and press Enter.

In Windows 10, you can also right-click on the bottom left corner of your screen and select Device Manager. In Windows 7, you can open the Control Panel, click Hardware and Sound, and click Device Manager under Hardware and Printer.

See your Hardware Installed

By default, the Device Manager displays a list of your installed hardware, sorted by category. You can expand this category to see the hardware you have installed on your computer. If you've forgotten the exact model number of your video card, or even a hard drive or DVD drive, you can quickly find that information in the device manager.

Note that some hardware does not appear in this list by default. You can see it by clicking View and choose Show hidden devices. It will display a variety of "non-plug and play drivers," including low-level system drivers included with Windows and drivers installed by third-party software.

Windows does not display some type of hidden devices, even when you turn on the Show hidden devices option. "Ghost" devices, such as USB devices that are not connected to your computer, it will not appear in the list. To see it in Windows 7, Vista, or XP, you have to start Device Manager in a special way.

First, open a Command Prompt window. Run the following command in it:

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set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices = 1

start devmgmt.msc

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Device Manager will open and will now display all hidden devices when you select Show hidden devices from the View menu. You can use this trick to remove the driver associated with the old, cut your hardware. This hidden feature has been removed in Windows 10, so look like a "ghost" devices is not possible anymore.

Identify Device That does not Working Properly

To identify devices that do not work well - perhaps because of a problem with their drivers - look for the yellow triangle containing an exclamation mark on the device icon.

Right-click the device and select Properties to see more information about this issue. The problem could be a driver issue, system resource conflicts, or something else. If the problem driver, usually you can install new drivers for it from the Driver tab in the Properties dialog.

Disable a Device

Say you want to switch off the device completely. Probably damaged your laptop touchpad and send event ghosts, move your mouse cursor when you do not want it. Maybe you never use your laptop webcam and you want to turn it off at the system level to ensure no malware can use your webcam to spy on you. Whatever your reason, you can individual hardware from the Device Manager.

For example, let's say we do not like annoying beep that comes from our computer. It beeps coming from the speakers on your computer's motherboard.

To disable it, click the View menu and select Show hidden devices. Expanding Non-Plug and Play Drivers section, right-click the sound driver, and select Properties.

Click the Driver tab and set the Startup Type to Disabled. You will not hear a beep from the Windows again. (Note that, for most types of hardware, usually you can right-click them and select Disable to disable them immediately.)

This setting only affects Windows, so you may hear a beep when booting. This is a troubleshooting feature that allows your motherboard to beep at you if a problem occurs.

Managing Driver This device

A device properties window contains information and settings that may be specific to the type of hardware. However, you should not need to see most of the information or options here.

The most important settings for solving the problem is the driver settings. After right-clicking the device and choose Properties, click the Driver tab. You will find information about drivers installed and buttons to control it.

Driver Details: View details about the exact location of the file that is used by the device driver on your system. You do not need this option.

Driver Update: Install an updated driver. Windows allows you to search online for driver updates or manually select the drivers you have downloaded to your system, as you can when installing the device to normal. Looking for a driver update may help if the driver is old and outdated. If you want to manually select the custom, driver downloaded to the device, you will do it from here.

Roll Back Driver: Return to the previous device driver to use. If you update to a new version of the driver and the hardware is not working properly, you have to downgrade the driver. You can hunt down old driver and install it manually, but this button provides a quick way to downgrade the driver. If this button is grayed out, the driver has not been updated, so no previous driver to roll back to.

Disable: Disable the device, preventing it from working on Windows until you turn it back on.

Uninstall: Uninstall the drivers associated with the device from your system. Note that this does not remove all the driver files, so uninstalling the driver from the Control Panel is a good idea, if this is possible. You may have to reboot your computer after doing this. It is only necessary if you want to clean the specific driver from your system and try to make the device and driver from the beginning.

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