Unknown Devices in Device Manager

Written By:
Dave Kelsey
Last Edited:

If you upgrade your older FRED operating system to a newer OS you may discover that there are some "Unknown Devices" in Device Manager. This may be due to the fact that your new version of Windows was released after these motherboards were released, and the manufacturer may not have created drivers for the board.

To determine which hardware/driver component is causing the conflict, open up Device Manager and double-click on the malfunctioning device. Select the Details tab and then the Hardware Ids from the dropdown options. Note the PCI\VEN#&DEV#. Enter this value into your favorite search engine and you should see results that reflect the type of device it's assigned to. ie. PCI\VEN_11AB&DEV_6145 is assigned to a Marvell 61xx RAID Controller.

Determine which motherboard you have. You can right-click on My Computer and select Details, open up the side panel on the system and look at the motherboard or check you toolbox for a motherboard manual. Once you've discovered your motherboard model number (and it's an ASUS board) you can find drivers via a search at http://support.asus.com. If your motherboard does not offer newer Windows drivers, select the latest 64-bit version and try them. Unfortunately, if this doesn't resolve the issues, the new version of Windows is not compatible with the older hardware.

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