Be Excellent To Each Other

I've just reinstalled Windows on an old Packard Bell Laptop. It's an Easynote or something but I can't find the serial number as it's been rubbed off the sticker it came on.

My question is, how do I find out what sound card I have in it? The hardware update wizard can't find it and there's tons of different drivers on the Packard Bell website.

Is there an easy way to find out?

You could try something like Belarc or Everest and running a scan of your PC to tell you what's there.

Hmmm... I just tried that and they didn't mention a sound card at all. That's odd.

Maybe I missed it? I'll try again..

*Edit* It didn't tell me what soundcard is in there but it did give me the laptops serial number! That should help me out on the Packard Bell website!

Thanks Devilman. Looks like that has done the trick!

For future reference.

If the driver is installed you can go to device manager and look at the devices in there. If it's not installed and listed as an unknown device there is another way but it's more complex.

Go to the unknown device. Right click it and open the properties window. Then click on the details tab and change the drop down to Hardware IDs. Like this.



Now. Ignore the fact that my window says High definition audio device properties. Yours (with no driver installed) will say Unknown device properties but you can still access the Hardware IDs.

OK, now, how to descramble the info to ID your sound card/network card/any unknown device.

Look at the string. VEN_10. VEN = Vendor, 10 = number of vendor.

And then the string part DEV_0662. Dev = device, 0662 = unique device code.

So in this instance VEN (vendor) = 10 which in this case 10 is Realtek/clones and DEV (device) 0662 = the number code for the exact model of realtek device.

A simple way to use that string is to type the entire thing into google (the entire whole thing verbatim) and it will then find one of the device ID websites set up and point you to which device/model/manu that you have.