Finding drivers for obscure devices on Windows 10. A short walkthrough.

This post goes back to "Obscure ways to get and old hp printer driver for Windows XP".

Long story short, aka the quick-and-dirty version:

If a computer or notebook with Windows 10 has an 'unknown device' with this ID:

ACPI\CPL0002\2&DABA3FF&2

Then the Windows Update Catalog does offer a driver for it.

But the following conditions must be met:

• Windows Update is unable to find drivers for this device;
• the maker of your PC does not have drivers available for your model of notebook pertaining to this device. If the maker of your computer does actually provides a driver for this device on the particular make and model of your computer, use that driver and no other;
• you might not be able to tell the make and model of your laptop, because the labels at the bottom of the computer have faded, and so, it's hard to find the correct driver from the PC maker's official website.
• the non-availability of the driver can coincide with one or both following possiblities:
  • Your notebook is no longer supported by the manufacturer; and/or
  • the maker of your PC is not a big-name outfit that is able to reliably provide drivers on its own for this device.
    (I've decided against naming individual PC makers, as some people would specify a search prepending the particular PC makers' names with negative operators, so excluding their name[s] to get a more precise result.)

If one ore more of these conditions are met, go to the Windows Update Catalog, and search using the CPL0002 device ID. (search link here)

In this case, the device ID was the only useful piece of information, and so, searching by device ID is more likely to yield results matching the hardware installed. Searching using the name or make/model of this device may yield incompatible results.

The result is "Compal Embedded System Control" version 1.0.0.4 as 'Other hardware' (listed like that as of 2021).

I picked the latest version, dated 26.11.2015, and clicked on the Download button.

The download is a .cab file that must be extracted with an extractor program of your choice into a separate folder. I used 7-Zip to do that.

Before installing:
• have Device Manager open, to see if there are any changes during install.
• create screenshots of all listed System devices in Device Manager. This ought to help in comparing changes.
• create a system restore point. You will need this, if and when things go wrong.

The extracted contents of the .cab package include four files, among them ENFC.inf. Right-click on that, and click Install.

The Device Manager should display a change, and the identified device should be listed. Other newly-recognised devices may also be listed. Worked for me.

After that, power management in a specific old notebook I have, improved, and the fan began blowing out less hot air. At least it seemed to me like that.

Do keep in mind, that I also did a large number of optimisations in the system to switch off most unnecessary background tasks, which certainly helped to reduce the size of the system commit, and the strain on system RAM and the hard drive.

I also reduced the maximum state of the CPU from 100% to 90% in advanced power management options. It's one of those nice things to have in Windows 10.

As a coda, I cannot recommend this process for upgrading the drivers of all devices inside, or connected to a computer. Because if things work normally, one should not update the drivers like this at all. Usually, and on most computers, Windows Update is good enough anyway at finding the right driver for you. In this very particular case and device, I see Windows Update as having missed it.