In some cases, particularly when you’re dealing with printers, the generic drivers that Windows 10 finds may not be enough. Select the ‘Search automatically for updated driver software’ option.

From the context menu, select Update drive and you will see the following window. Regardless, to fix the problem, open Device Manager and right-click the unknown device. This may be a simple error where it was unable to find drivers or it wasn’t able to correctly identify a device. For whatever reason, Windows 10 didn’t install drivers for the device. If you’re connecting it via a USB port, try using a different port.Īs mentioned earlier, this is a driver problem. If that doesn’t work, you should remove the device and connect it again. On system restart, Windows 10 will once again detect any new hardware that’s connected to the system and look for drivers for it. You might be tired of hearing this but, if a device shows up as an unknown device, you should try restarting your system. If you see it labeled as an unknown device in Device Manager then you have a driver problem. If you’ve connected a new device and it isn’t working properly, Device Manager is a good place to start looking for what might be wrong.

Portable devices come and go when they’re connected/disconnected but they are nevertheless still listed there. This includes both internal and portable devices, and even takes into account the various fans installed on your system to keep it cool when it’s running.

The device manage on Windows 10 lists every single hardware device that is connected to your system.

Device manager portable devices