The portable application offers a flat view mode for all devices that are currently connected to the operating system. The data can be sorted in various ways by clicking on one of the columns of the table. Listed are information like the device name, manufacturer, service, device type code, the driver version, description, date or inf file.

Another option that is not available in the standard Windows Device Manager is the ability to enable, disable or uninstall multiple devices at once. DevManView can also list the devices of a remote computer if the current user has administrator rights on that computer system as well.

All or selected devices can be saved to a text file. Another option is the generation of an html report which will create a html file with detailed information about all or selected devices.

DevManView is an alternative to the Windows Device Manger. It is fully portable, supports 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows and compatible with most Windows operating systems including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can be downloaded from the Nirsoft website.

Related posts

• Windows System Control Center (7)
• Windows Shortcuts Manager (2)
• Windows Registry Monitoring With RegFromApp (3)
• Windows Operating Systems Special Folders View (6)
• Windows Live Messenger Contacts Manager (7)

It is possible to write a simple batch script that can turn computer hardware off. Might be a handy for users who connect their mobile computer to a power source and use it on the road as well. They would simply turn off the unnecessary computer hardware on the road and turn it on again once it is connected to a power source again.

The creation does not require programming skills but you need to know a bit about the computer hardware installed on your system. Not all hardware should be disabled, possibilities include

• Audio Devices
• Network Adapters
• Wireless Networking Adapters
• CD, DVD and Blu-Ray drives
• Floppy drives
• webcams, card readers and other peripherals

You need three commands to work with devcon.

• devcon find
• devcon disable
• devcon enable

Start by downloading devcon from the official Microsoft website. Unpack it to a directory of your choice. It might be a good idea to put it into a directory that is listed in the system path of the operating system, e.g. /system32.

Open the Windows command line with [Windows R], [cmd], [enter].

Enter devcon find * to get a listing of all hardware devices. This can be a long list, you can use the following command to find a specific device (the command is case sensitive):

devcon find * | find "computer hardware identifier"

To find all Creative devices one could enter

devcon find * | find "Creative"

The device in the screenshot above would be the Creative Soundblaster X-FI sound card. To disable that sound card one would use the following command

devcon disable PCI\VEN_1102

It is enough to add the unique identifier for the hardware device. Here are some tips to make the most out of the find command:

Find all PCI devices

devcon find * | find "PCI"

Find all USB devices

devcon find * | find "USB"

All that needs to be done now is to collect the unique identifiers for all computer hardware devices that should be turned off at times.

Create a new text document on the computer, name it disable.bat. Right-click it, select edit and add as many devcon disable lines to it as you want.

devcon disable PCI\VEN_1102
devcon disable PCI\VEN_1317
devcon disable USB\VID_1532

Now create a second batch file, name it enable.bat and use the following code (you basically exchange disable with enable)

devcon enable PCI\VEN_1102
devcon enable PCI\VEN_1317
devcon enable USB\VID_1532

That’s a basic script. You could add echo commands to it, combine the two scripts into one and beatify it further. The basic script on the other hand does what it is supposed to do.

Related posts

• Disney Netpal (8)
• Windows Device Manager Alternative (3)
• What You Should Do After Buying A New Computer System (18)
• Web Browser Have Impact On Battery Life (1)
• Use Favorites to access Folders faster (1)

The software interface is divided into various tabs and windows that display all kinds of information. The main window display a device tree, device list and drivers and services tab. A selected item will be displayed in detail on the right window. The information are color coded and make use of checkboxes to allow for mass editing and removal of devices and drivers.

The different view modes are interesting for most users. It is possible to display only hidden and detached drivers and devices which makes it easy to analyze and remove those from the computer system. Hovering the mouse over an entry will display a popup with extensive information about that entry.

It is possible to search for specific devices or drivers using the in build search and to print or export the device list to a txt or csv file.

Device Remover is a professional looking software program for the Windows operating system that provides the means to manage device drivers effectively. The download of the setup file on the author’s homepage failed during the test but it was possible to download the portable version without problems.

Related posts

• Computer Hardware Drivers List (6)
• Windows Device Manager Alternative (3)
• Remove Old Windows Device Drivers (10)
• Youtube Video Search Is A Barebone Youtube Downloader (2)
• Xkcd Comic Wallpaper Changer (2)

It is quite easy to check if Windows is still listing old device drivers on the computer system. All that needs to be done is to access the Windows Device Manager. The easiest way to do this is to press [Windows Pause] which will open the System Properties. A click on Hardware > Device Manager will open the device manager.

The first step in there is to enable the display of hidden devices. Hidden devices are all devices that are currently not connected to the computer system. This can be old device drivers or hardware devices that are currently not connected. To enable hidden devices click on View > Show Hidden Devices.

Windows will now display those devices in the list of hardware devices. Now it is time to click through all the hardware categories of the device manager to scan for devices that are not longer in use. This can be computer monitors, input devices like keyboards or mice, video cards and practically any computer hardware that can be replaced.

A right-click on such a device will provide the means to uninstall the device driver from the computer system. The uninstallation should remove the device entry from the device manager. Nothing can go wrong if you happen to uninstall working hardware devices from the system. Windows will either automatically install the new drivers at the next startup or prompt for a driver disk to perform the installation.

Cautious users might want to create a device driver backup before starting the process.

Related posts

• Powerful Device Manager Device Remover (12)
• Windows Tip: Don’t replace any files while copying (10)
• Windows Steady State (11)
• Windows shut down takes ages ? Try Profile Hive (5)
• Windows Keyboard shortcuts (0)

Each device contains information about the manufacturer, OEM name, device type, device model and even the name of the device. It is therefor easy to identify the device and right-click the device to search for drivers for the device or contact the vendor using the program itself.

It would not be a problem however to use a normal search engine to find a driver instead of the build in search. The biggest problem that I see is that a lot of devices are shown and it could be quite complicated to find the correct one that corresponds to the yellow icon in the device manager.

Related posts

• Superfast Shutdown for XP and Vista (4)
• Security and Privacy Complete (0)
• Create a Multimedia XP Screensaver (5)
• Auto It Freeware (3)
• Xsite Freeware (1)

Open the command prompt by pressing Windows + R, typing cmd and hitting enter. Type the following line and hit enter at the end:  set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 ; Once this is done open your device manager from the control panel and enable the option to view hidden devices in the View tab.

This ensures that all hidden devices that have not been removed in the device manager will be listed and you can see if someone else added a external hard drive, usb stick or similar devices to your system. Great way to find out if someone spies on you or copied files from your system while you were not there.

It can be easily countered by removing the device from the device managers list.

Related posts

• What is connecting to the Internet (4)
• Visualize Hard Drive Space (3)
• Unknown Device Identifier (5)
• Ultimate Defrag (16)
• True Crypt 6 released (3)