Uninstalling Devices
You should always uninstall a non-PnP device from Device Manager before you remove the device from the computer. (Win2K's Plug and Play feature doesn't enumerate PnP devices that you remove from a computer, so as far as Device Manager is concerned, the device simply disappears and no longer exists.)
To uninstall a legacy device, select the device and choose Uninstall from Device Manager's Action menu (or right-click the device listing and choose Uninstall from the shortcut menu). You must confirm your action.
In theory, uninstalling removes the device from Device Manager and removes the device's settings from the registry. However, some registry entries don't go away after a device's uninstallation. These entries seem to do no harm, even when another device uses the resources that the uninstalled device abandons.
Searching for New PnP Devices
If you attach a PnP device to your computer while the computer is running, Win2K's Plug and Play feature doesn't automatically find the device because Plug and Play enumerates your system during OS startup. (You shouldn't attach these devices this way, but many of us ignore that rule when installing printers or modems.)
To force the computer to search for new PnP devices without rebooting, select Scan for hardware changes from Device Manager's Action menu. The OS should find your new device and display the standard New Hardware Found message. If the OS doesn't find the device, the device probably isn't PnP. In that case, you'll need to use the Control Panel Add/Remove Hardware applet to perform a manual installation.
Troubleshooting Devices
When a device listing displays a yellow exclamation point, the device has a problem. The device's Properties dialog box usually offers a rather vague and unhelpful message about the problem, an error code number, and a message encouraging you to click Troubleshooter to try to resolve the problem. Clicking that button opens a hardware troubleshooter, which asks questions and then makes suggestions (or asks additional questions) in response to your answer. I've heard a rumor that Troubleshooter can actually resolve a problem, but I've never had this experience. What I do have is the Microsoft article "Explanation of Error Codes Generated by Device Manager" (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q125/1/74.asp), which enumerates the error code numbers and frequently points me in the right direction. In my experience, this article is certainly more helpful than Troubleshooter.
Printing a Report
The Device Manager's View menu includes a Print option that you can use to generate a printed report of your computer's devices. The Print dialog box gives you several options:
- System summary prints summary information about all the devices. (Many administrators print this information and store the printout so that after a major disaster, reconfiguring resources—especially for non-PnP devices—is quick and easy.)
- Selected class or device prints information about the object you selected before you chose the Print option.
- All devices and system summary prints more than most people ever want to know about every device on the system.
The Print dialog box also includes a Print to file option, which is good because these reports (especially the third choice) can be quite large and you might want to wait to send the print job until your printer is idle. However, the resulting file is specific to the selected printer (use the command copy filename.prn LPTx /b to send the file to the printer) and you can't view the file on screen. For such reasons, I install a generic text printer on every computer and specify File as the port. I can open the resulting searchable text file in any editor or word processor, then use the software's Print command to print the entire file or selected portions.
The Payoff
Device Manager provides an easy way to solve resource conflicts, manually override configuration settings, and change devices' behavior. Incidentally, you can use Device Manager remotely only in read-only mode, but this option still lets you access device information throughout the network without leaving your desk.