Sometimes I'll encounter a machine where there are random devices in Device Manager that have the yellow exclamation mark showing they are not working. I try to have Windows update the driver but it fails. I could try and manually find the driver online, but can't since the device has no description really. Long story short, is there a program that can find drivers for unknown devices?
You can manually find them. In device manager open the hardware with exclamation mark and go to details and select hardware id, copy the first line. You can use Code: http://driverzone.com/node/181 to search for it. Google for manufacturer and download the driver for your operating system. Drivermax used to have an identify unknown devices option, don't know if it still does. Also haven't used it but heard of Unkown Device Identifier from huntersoft.
Try Driver Booster, it's free and works very well. If that doesn't work I can offer other suggestions.
This site can sometimes help find out what the actual device/vendor is from the harware id. It's searchable. http://www.pcidatabase.com/
However, if a driver is a part of the bundle, for instance Intel, AMD and similar, you should update the whole bundle instead of a single driver. Moreover if a bundle is OEM, you should update it from a vendor (Acer, Asus etc.) site only.
I almost agree with you exept for certain Intel drivers like AHCI and MEI drivers, i always install only the drivers for these two directly from the device manager "Manual have disk". (i've just one SSD on board, if you have several disk or use raid mode i'm agree). Some info : http://www.win-raid.com/t2f23-Intel-R-RST-RSTe-Drivers-newest-v-v-WHQL.html http://www.win-raid.com/t596f39-Intel-Management-Engine-Drivers-Firmware-amp-System-Tools.html i couldn't agree anymore for the AMD and Nvidia related graphic card, i always use the setup installer (personalized installation). And for the vendor website driver arrrghhh!!, i 've always bad experience with them (Gigabyte, Asus....), the benefit for me it's just to gain the list of material inside the machine, nothing else. Little Off Topic : Sure it's good to have the latest suitable driver for your machine, but don't forget the Firmware too like the Gbe lan, MEI, Intel Efi........ (it's give you the opportunity to use the full power of the driver), and honesty very very few vendor upgrade them because of you've have to be a little bit experienced to do that and it's extremly risky.
Thanks @Rules for the valuable informations. I have noticed an error "Intel experience centre has stopped" in the reliability monitor. I have traced the error and have found that it occurs every time when my laptop is awoken from the sleep mode (automatically or manually). Do you have any suggestions? Apart this error everything works fine on my machine.
i 'am tempted to say that it's not harmul, a driver could be the cause, IMHO, i always disable the sleep/hibernate mode on my machine to avoid this unresolved bug since several OS (mainly vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10). Plus you gain space on your disk http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730 OH OH we are going offtopic Rules.
Could they be legacy drivers from devices you have had connected before but no longer use..? Can they be removed or disabled..? I remember having this issue on windows 7 and i removed the unknown device driver and windows corrected it upon reboot.
If you go into Device Manager, right click on the yellow question mark, go into properties. Go to details, in the drop down box under properties, highlight Hardware Ids. You can copy "Ctrl + C" the value and paste it into google and google will find what it is. I've done this a few times. Here is the one under my audio. HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0885&SUBSYS_10ECE601&REV_1001 If you paste that into google, it will find what it is.