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How do you know which hardware ID the client used to match a driver to?

To find out which hardware ID was used in driver selection, we need to take a look at two properties of the driver. The Hardware ID and the Driver Node Strong Name.

Every PnP device has a set of hardware Ids that are set by the manufacture. They range from specifically identifying the device. The manufacture will also include some IDs that are a close match. When Windows starts up, it enumerates all devices in the computer. It ranks them with the most specific hardware ID with a rank of zero. It will then try to match a driver in the driver store to the hardware ID with the lowest rank. If a driver is not available for the ID with the lowest rank, it tries to match a driver to the next ID in the list. The question is, which hardware ID was used?

· Open your Device Manager.

· Select a device. (It must be one that does not have any issues.)

· Go to its properties.

· Click Details tab.

· Select Driver Node Strong Name from the drop down list. This attribute is populated with a string that identifies the driver used. At the end of the string is the Hardware ID used.

· Select Hardware Ids from the drop down list and compare.

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