Device Manager is more than just a place to troubleshoot hardware problems; it also provides a means of fine-tuning how certain items of hardware operate. Double-clicking the entry for any device displays its Properties dialogue box, which at the very least contains General, Driver and Details tabs, but there may be several more.

DVD drives, for example, have a tab on which the default DVD region can be changed. Hard disks have a Policies tab where you can disable write caching if there is a risk of losing data through sudden power loss, and many network adapters have a Power Management tab where you can decide whether the adapter is allowed to turn off the computer or automatically bring it out of standby. In the Mouse Properties dialogue box is an Advanced Settings tab where you can adjust the mouse's sample rate if its motion is too jerky. All these options may well be available elsewhere (Windows seems to have at least five ways to do everything) but it's nice to have them all in one place.

Another handy feature, if you need or have been asked by a support technician to provide a list of all the devices and resources used by your computer, is to select the name of your computer where it appears at the top of the Device Manager window, open the Action menu and then click Print.

Devices attached using USB are not listed separately; they're assigned to an appropriate Device Manager category, so expect to find scanners, cameras and webcams listed as Imaging devices and external hard drives and memory keys as Disk drives. If you have two or more devices in the same category and you can't work out which is which, simply unplug one of them and see which disappears.

Device Manager is a great way of finding out whether USB ports are powered or unpowered. Powered ports, such as those built into a PC or attached to a separate DC power adapter, can supply webcams, scanners and similar devices with up to 500mA of power. Many USB devices, including most hard disks, cannot operate from unpowered USB ports.