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If I can't find a driver installer on the internet when I prep for a reinstall of Windows 7, I figure if the driver is already installed, why not back it up and reinstall later?

The only method I know of is going through Device Manager > Device Properties > Driver Details.

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This gives me a nice list of all the files, but then I need to go manually retrieve all of them. For devices with a lot of driver files, this is inefficient.

Is there a better/faster way to accomplish this?

2 Answers 2

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Your files are stored in 1 of three places.

go to

%SystemRoot%\System32\

And look for the following directories: Drivers, DriverStore, and DrvStore (may or may not be there).

Also you will want to copy "%systemroot%\inf\".

Copy these directories to some sort of removable media....

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  • I'd rather not copy everything because on some systems the driver store can be massive. But in a jam, I suppose I could do that.
    – user201262
    Oct 28, 2013 at 16:04
  • @Moses - You wouldn't copy everything just the drivers not installed by Windows Update.
    – Ramhound
    Oct 28, 2013 at 16:15
  • @Ramhound A) Why? B) How?
    – user201262
    Oct 28, 2013 at 16:33
  • In the screenshot you posted you have two driver files used by your keyboard. If they were not standard files that were included in Windows you could in theory back them up and transfer them to a new Windows installation.
    – Ramhound
    Oct 28, 2013 at 17:03
  • @Ramhound I know, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. I can copy/paste all the files manually after finding them, but if I have a device that has 50 driver files, it takes quite a while. I'm looking for a more efficient way to back them up.
    – user201262
    Oct 28, 2013 at 17:05
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I recently had to do this, I found a piece of software called DriverMax. Found it very useful when backing up all the drivers for that machine.

Source: http://www.drivermax.com/

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