Manually backup drivers

Question

I need to reinstall Windows on a laptop. Normally I before doing this I would back up the drivers using Double Driver.

However this time the computer will not boot, and for some reason even if I take out the drive and hook it to another computer using enclosure, the drive does not get recognized. The only luck I have had is by using a Linux Live CD, this has allowed me to back up documents, pictures, etc.

I was thinking I might be able to simply copy the driver files to a flash drive, so I can use them after I reinstall Windows. How could I go about doing this?

Answer 1

Yes you can! you need to get 2 folders

c:\windows\system32\Drivers
c:\windows\system32\DriverStore

Also wouldn't hurt to get c:\windows\inf

back up those folders, and when reinstalling windows just go to device manager and point to the location theses folders in the flash drive

so if you back them up on a flash drive and the flash drive is F: lets say you would just point it to the F:\ and it would find the drivers like magic!

F:\Drivers
F:\DriverStore

Answer 2

From my experience this can't be done, unless you have the installers for the drivers on that drive somewhere. If the laptop isn't horribly old, you can get the drivers from the manufacturers site (like gateway or toshiba) as long as you have the model or serial number. Some drivers may be able to just be copied over like that, but the majority of them have more than 1 file or they have registry entries. It's just a lot simpler to use the manufacturer's website to get the drivers. That's as long as you aren't installing an unsupported version of windows, although if that's the case you probably have the installers for the drivers that you could copy and reinstall.

You could try copying everything, then on the new re-installation when you're updating/installing drivers through Device Manager/Add Hardware you could search the backup for the files it asks for -- but I haven't had a lot of luck with that.