View Hidden Devices in Device Manager

By default, Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) does not provide the option to “Show Hidden Devices”. You’ve probably know the steps to enable this option:

1. Open a command prompt in (Run as) administrator mode
2. Type the following two commands:
   set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
   start devmgmt.msc
3. Once Device Manager starts up, you can click View –> Show Hidden Devices
   

But if your working on a server and need to review the full list of devices, doing the above steps is not very productive. THere’s a way to set this option permanently, entering it as a system variable. Here are the steps for Windows 2008 R2, but the same variable can be created in other versions of Windows.

1. Click Start
2. Right click on Computer, then click Properties
3. Click on the Advanced System Settings in the left frame
4. Under the Advanced tab, click on Environment Variables…
5. Click New
   For the Variable name, type:  devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices
   For the Variable value, type: 1
6. Click OK

That’s it! Here’s a screen shot of the above process:

Now, any time you access Device Manager on this server, the Show Hidden Options will be available from the View options