Scan for disconnected hardware peripherals

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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.

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  Jelle Piekaerts

  • May 15, 2020 11:29
  • Edited

  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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