Viewing Device and Driver Details In Windows XP

To view information about a specific device, double-click its entry in Device Manager’s list of installed devices. Each device has its own multi-tabbed properties dialog box. At a minimum, each device includes two tabs, General and Driver. The General tab lists basic facts about the device, including the device name, the name of its manufacturer, and its current status, as shown in Figure1.

Figure1. The General tab supplies basic information about a device and whether it is currently functioning properly.

The Driver tab, shown in Figure 2, lists version information about the currently installed driver for the selected device. Although the information shown here is sparse, it covers the essentials. You can tell at a glance who supplied the driver and whether it’s digitally signed; you can also determine the date and version number of the driver, which is important when deciding whether you should download and install an available update.

Figure 2. The Driver tab, which is available for every installed device, offers valuable information and tools for managing installed drivers.

To view additional information about an installed driver, click the Driver Details button. As you can see from Figure 3, the Driver File Details dialog box provides far more comprehensive information, including the names and locations of all associated files. Selecting any file name from this list displays details for that file in the lower portion of the dialog box.

Figure 3. This detailed view of an installed driver provides important information about each file the device uses. In this example, a number of files are not digitally signed.

In addition to this basic information, the properties dialog box for a given device can include any number of custom tabs. The Lucent Win Modem shown in Figure 4 is an extreme example, with a total of seven tabs, including the basic information on the General and Driver tabs. (Settings for modems are also available from the Phone And Modem Options dialog box in Control Panel.)

Figure 4. Any device that requires system resources includes the Resources tab in its Device Manager entry.

By design, the information displayed in Device Manager is dynamic. When you add, remove, or reconfigure a device, the information stored here changes as well. To save a printed record of the settings for one or more devices, open Device Manager and choose Action, Print. For the most complete record of device settings and installed drivers, select the All Devices And System Summary option in the Print dialog box.