How to Find drivers for unknown devices in Windows Vista

How to Find drivers for unknown devices in Windows Vista

Well, i’ve been playing w/vista now for about a few months and have found a very obvious but useful tip on installing non-vista / ‘unknown devices’ compatible hardware (ie no vista drivers or xp drivers do not work)


i know i have a ton of usb peripherials/accessories but Vista drivers for devices are still hard to find for those smaller company hardware. if you were an early xp adopter, you remember the woes of waiting for companies to release xp drivers for their devices. so you’ve looked everywhere and tried everything but still no luck? why not try the good ole vista system32 area.

just one word of caution; this may not work for all devices (but what the heck eh? if none exist, trying something never hurts. worst case scenerio, you may have to boot into safe mode and delete the device if you bsod).

1. Insert/Plugin the hardware
2. You will get the ‘new hardware found’ wizard, go through it, choose to automatically install.
3. once it searches for a driver and fails, go to the Browse for driver on your computer screen.
4. put this path in or browse to this location: C:\Windows\System32 and check the search subfolders checkbox and click Next.
5. Vista will search the location and may find your hardware or may not.

Not sure why Vista doesn’t use this driver location by default at times baffles me. Perhaps its the subfolder option that lets it find more non active drivers??

hopefully your hardware is found and works! If not, you only wasted a few clicks of your time. :)