Windows 8 Quick Tip: How To Check the Complete History of Troublesome Hardware

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You’ve got a piece of hardware attached to your Windows system that goes wonky, and you have no idea what went wrong and are having the hard time nail it down because it only happens intermittently. It would be helpful if you could see the entire history of this piece of hardware on your system to get a clue what’s been happening.

Fortunately, Windows 8 has this feature built right in with the system, inside the Device Manager. And here is how you can access to it.

1. Launch Device Manager. The quickest way is to launch it right from Win+X menu (Figure 1)

Win+X Device Manager - Windows 8 Quick Tip: How To Check the Complete History of Troublesome Hardware
Figure 1 – Launch Device Manager from Win+X menu

. Press Win+X keyboard shortcut, and click Device Manager from the menu.

2. Then find the device you want to check the whole history, and right-click to it and choose Properties (Figure 2).

Device Manager device properties - Windows 8 Quick Tip: How To Check the Complete History of Troublesome Hardware
Figure 2 – Opening properties of the device

3. Go to Events tab, and you will see the history of the device you selected, including the dates the device and the drivers were installed. Click each of the entries to see more information at below (Figure 3).

Device Manager Event Properties - Windows 8 Quick Tip: How To Check the Complete History of Troublesome Hardware
Figure 3 – Event of the device

If you want to see even more details, click “View All Events…” icon, and the Event Viewer launches, with more detailed information showing up (Figure 4).

Device Manager Event View more Event Viewer 2013 07 26 10 11 41 - Windows 8 Quick Tip: How To Check the Complete History of Troublesome Hardware
Figure 4 – See detailed info in Event Viewer

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