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Scan for disconnected hardware peripherals

jelle.piekaerts

May 06, 2020 06:43

Is there a way to scan for disconnected hardware devices?

Specifically I'm trying to scan all computers to see if a USB headset was once connected.

Currently PDQ Inventory only shows the effectively connected headsets at the time of the scan.

I know disconnected hardware is saved somewhere on the computer as you can see it by using the "DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES" system variable and then starting device manager.

Comments

1 comment

jelle.piekaerts
May 06, 2020 08:43 (Edited May 15, 2020 11:29)

I created a registry scan profile that scans for the following keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\**\FriendlyName

This seems to return what I need to know at the moment.

I also got the following helpful feedback from PDQ support:

It looks like you can return this data with the PowerShell 'Get-PnpDevice' https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/pnpdevice/get-pnpdevice?view=win10-ps

The new PowerShell scanner will allow you to return this info to Inventory.

https://www.pdq.com/blog/powershell-scanner-best-practices/

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