Windows XP Hacks

Uncover Hidden Hardware with the Device Manager

Hardware ghosts and other hidden devices can cause system conflicts, and the Device Manager won’t report on them. This hack forces the Device Manager to uncover all your hidden hardware so you can resolve any conflicts.

One of the strangest hardware problems you’ll encounter in XP are hidden and ghosted hardware devices that are invisible to you but that may cause system conflicts. You won’t be able to see them in the Device Manager [Hack #95]. When you use that troubleshooting tool, you won’t be able to uncover any problems they may be causing.

There are several types of these hidden and residential gateways:optimizingghosted devices that are hidden by the Device Manager. Non-plug-and-play printers, drivers, and similar devices don’t show up. Most newer devices are plug-and-play, so you’ll most likely encounter this problem only if you have old hardware attached to your PC. (Plug-and-play devices are automatically recognized and installed in XP.) In this instance, the device is physically present on your PC, but the Device Manager doesn’t show you that it’s there.

Then there are the so-called nonpresent or ghosted devices—devices that you’ve removed from your system without doing an uninstall, or whose uninstallation did not work properly. These devices aren’t physically present in your system, but XP treats them as if they were and devotes system resources to them. For example, if you physically remove an old network card without ...