Ferreri:
When I connect the board to a PC via USB, it shows up in my devices (Windows 7) as a Mega 2560. Every other one is listed as an Arduino Uno R3. I have several as they are used for an electronics class. Drivers can only be installed with admin rights, and this anomalous board is not recognized by the computers that only have had the Uno driver. If I update the driver using Windows and point to the arduino drivers, it says "driver successfully installed - Mega 2560".
Well that is a Windows PC thing and has nothing to do with your arduino board or the IDE. There is only one USB driver software distributed with the Arduino IDE and that is what you install, only once. There after anytime you plug a new Uno or Mega board, windows uses the existing USB driver but assigns a new COM number (and I guess a name at the same time) for that board. So you can own two different Uno boards and they will be assigned different COM port numbers. I believe one can go into the driver and rename and reassign the COM number if you wish, but I never bothered