Create a backup copy of Windows drivers. Backing up and restoring Windows drivers Backing up windows 7 drivers
- Hello admin, I want to reinstall the Windows 8.1 operating system on my HP laptop, but I don’t want to bother searching for drivers after reinstalling the system, everything has changed on the HP website and it’s completely unclear how to download drivers there. Is there any way to backup drivers Windows tools 8.1 and how to install drivers from this backup later.
- Hello, the question is this - at work on a budget computer, you need to reinstall the operating system Windows system 7, on the site of the motherboard driver only for Windows XP, I can't imagine where the former system administrator found the driver for the "seven" for this mother. So before reinstalling the system, I need to make a backup of the drivers?
Hello friends, if you want to backup all installed drivers in operating system, you can use the following two methods. These methods can be very useful to you if your computer contains some rare device, the driver for which is difficult to find on the Internet. After reinstalling the operating system, you simply point the Windows driver installer to the previously created backup and that's it, but unfortunately not all drivers can be installed in this way, I will also tell you what to do in this case.
For example, on the site of my old motherboard there are no drivers for Windows 8.1 at all, but only drivers for Windows 7, so at one time after Windows installation 8.1, I had to look for drivers for some devices on the Internet, I don’t want to do this the second time, so I’ll definitely make a backup of the drivers before reinstalling the system.
The first way is to use the PowerShell command shell. Windows PowerShell- a very interesting tool for creating scripts for automating user actions in the Windows operating system.
The second way is to use Driver program magician.
Let's consider both options.
Backing Up Drivers Using the PowerShell Shell
Click on the start button with the left mouse
And choose Search, enter in the input field PowerShell, right-click on the utility that appears and select Run as administrator.
Export-WindowsDriver –Online -Destination I:\Drivers
Create a driver backup using the DriverMagician program
Go to the official website of the program http://www.drivermagician.com/download.htm 
Click on the button Back Up Drivers, in the right part of the window, all drivers that are not in the Windows 8 distribution are highlighted in red, tick them and then click on the button Start Backup,
In the window that appears, specify the storage medium for placing the backup, for example, I will indicate my flash drive and OK.
After a couple of minutes, the Windows 8.1 driver backup is ready and is located on the USB flash drive in the Drivers Backup folder.
How to restore drivers from a backup
After reinstalling windows 8.1 we go to the Device Manager, all devices that do not have a driver will be here with yellow triangles and an exclamation point. Install the driver for the video card. We click on our video card with the right mouse and select Update drivers
Search for drivers on this computer
Disks with drivers from a recently purchased motherboard, or from a video card, tend to disappear at the most inopportune moment.
And such a moment comes, most often when restoring the system or setting it up from scratch, when disks with drivers are simply necessary.
Of course, to download drivers for the motherboard, you can visit the manufacturer's website, go to the "support" section and download the most new version. But nothing can come of this, for network adapter you also need the driver that was on the lost disk.
You can backup the driver CD to your HDD in advance, but this will not help if the entire hard drive fails, and not individual logical drives.
Moreover, the "drivers" directory is often sent to the trash - it's big, but you need 3-4 drivers.
The author tried a couple of times to store system drivers on a flash drive, but with the same ending. In general, data security is a hot topic, and you will like another useful one. backup software - Cobian Backup.
May your system live happily ever after, but if you had to restore everything from scratch, use the small Double Driver program in advance. Checked: it is better to devote a few minutes to her, and she, in case of problems with the operating system, will save you a lot of time and nerves.
Double Driver - backup and restore drivers
This program is nothing more than a tool for working with drivers installed in the system. It is capable of analyzing installed drivers in a very short period of time - no more than a minute, creating a list of them and making a backup copy.
Double Driver is easy to use and easy to use, which is not a hindrance even the lack of Russian and Ukrainian languages. Even an inexperienced user will be able to cope with the program.
The program interface is clear and functional: Double Driver has a toolbar with a set of function buttons. So you don't have to look for the "necessary button" among the array of windows.
In addition, all the tools are arranged in order, according to the frequency of their use.
To scan the system, you need to select the "Backup" tool and click the "Scan Current System" button.
Then we make a choice of drivers that we want to add to our backup.
By analyzing the available system drivers, Double Driver displays a complete report on each of them - manufacturer, installation time, etc.
The analysis result can be printed using the "Print" tool.
As already mentioned, the program is characterized by high speed, while it consumes few resources and the overall performance of the PC does not drop during operation.
By creating a backup database, Double Driver takes care of the user's convenience: the copied files are not thrown into one directory - they are distributed over directories that are named identically to the names of the devices.
Is it worth saying that a saved backup takes up much less space on a flash drive than a copy of the entire disk?
It is not known why, but the developer introduced one detail into the program: during operation, you can configure the display mode of both all drivers of the system as a whole, and the display mode of drivers exclusively from Microsoft Corporation.
To restore, you need to use the "Restore" tool and click the "Locate Backup" button. You will be given the option to select a backup to restore.
During the restoration of a set of drivers, the program also shows its best side - as when creating a copy, it takes very little time, no more than a minute.
Good day!
I think many users have encountered the installation of one or another driver, even the new Windows 7, 8, 8.1 operating systems are not always able to independently recognize the device and select a driver for it. Therefore, sometimes you have to download drivers from various sites, install from CD / DVD discs that come with new equipment. In general, it takes a decent amount of time.
In order not to waste this time searching and installing each time, you can make a backup copy of the drivers, and in which case, quickly restore it. For example, many often have to reinstall Windows due to various bugs and glitches - why look for drivers again every time? Or let's say you bought a computer or laptop in a store, but there is no driver disk in the kit (which, by the way, often happens). In order not to look for them in case of problems with Windows OS, you can make a backup copy in advance. Actually, we will talk about this in this article ...
Important!
1) It is best to make a backup copy of the drivers immediately after setting up and installing all the equipment - i.e. when everything works well.
2) To create backup would need special program(more on that below) and preferably a flash drive or disk. By the way, you can save a copy to another partition hard drive, for example, if the Windows system is installed on the "C" drive, then it is better to place a copy on the "D" drive.
3) You need to restore drivers from a copy to the same version of Windows OS from which you made it. For example, if you made a copy in Windows 7, then restore it from a copy in Windows 7. If you changed the OS from Windows 7 to Windows 8, and then restore the drivers, some of them may not work correctly!
Programs for creating a backup copy of drivers in Windows OS
In general, there are quite a lot of programs of this kind. In this article, I would like to focus on the best of their kind (of course, in my humble opinion). By the way, all these programs, in addition to creating a backup copy, allow you to find and update drivers for all computer devices (more on this in this article:).
1.Slim Drivers
One of the best programs to work with drivers. Allows you to search, update, make backups, and restore from them almost any driver for any device. The database of drivers for this program is huge! Actually on it, I will show you how to make a copy of the drivers and restore from it.
http://www.boozet.org/dd.htm
Small free utility to back up drivers. Many users use this one, I personally did not use it so often (for all the time a couple of times). Although I admit that it can be better than Slim Drivers.
Not a bad program that allows you to easily and quickly make and restore from a copy of the driver. The only thing is that the driver base of this program is smaller than that of Slim Driver (this will come in handy when updating drivers, it does not affect when creating backups).
Creating a backup copy of drivers - instructions for working in Slim Drivers
Important! Slim Drivers requires an Internet connection to work (if the Internet does not work before installing the drivers, then, for example, when reinstalling Windows, restoring drivers may cause problems - it will not be possible to install the Slim Drivers program to restore the drivers. This is such a vicious circle).
1. To create a backup in Slim Driver, you first need to set up a hard drive location where the copy will be saved. To do this, go to the Options section, select the Backup subsection, specify the location of the copy on your hard drive (it is advisable to choose a partition other than where you have Windows installed) and click the Save button.
3. Literally in a matter of minutes (on my laptop in 2-3 minutes) a copy of the drivers is created. The success report can be seen in the screenshot below.
Restoring drivers from a backup
After reinstalling Windows or unsuccessfully updating drivers - they can be easily restored from our copy.
1. To do this, go to the Options section, then to the Restore subsection, select the location on the hard drive where the copies are stored (see a little higher in the article, you need to select the folder in which we created the copy), and click the Save button.
3. The program will warn you that you will need to restart your computer to restore. Before rebooting, save all documents so that some of the data is not lost.
That's all for today. By the way, many users praise the Driver Genius program. I tested this program, it allows you to add almost all the drivers on the PC to the backup copy, plus it will compress them and place them in the automatic installer. Only when restoring, errors are often observed: either the program was not registered and therefore only 2-3 drivers can be restored, then the installation is interrupted in half ... It is possible that only I was so lucky.
Everyone is happy!
Many users constantly reinstall the Windows operating system on their PC. This is usually due to the fact that the user is not satisfied Windows health. Often on the forums you can repeatedly find questions about exporting all settings or personal data. To put it simply, before installing a new OC, users want to save all important parameters in their system and transfer them to a new one. This begs the question of how to save drivers when reinstalling Windows.
To do this, there are many programs that solve these problems. The most unpleasant thing is when we see the “welcome” screen at the first start of the system, we understand that we are waiting for the next task of installing all the drivers that may have been lost for a long time.
Note: I recommend saving all drivers immediately after reinstalling Windows. That is, when Windows is installed, you immediately need to make sure that all drivers are saved in a separate folder, for example, on drive D and write “Do not touch”. At next installation system, you will already have all the drivers in a hollow configuration.
Instructions for backing up drivers in the Windows operating system
Download the DriverMax program, you can take it from the official website by clicking on the following link.
Note: This program is shareware. After 30 days, the program will stop working, in order to prevent this, you must register on the official website. For us, such a need does not matter to anyone, since we need to use it once.
When installing the program, you must agree to the license agreement. Put a tick in front, as shown in the figure and click the "Next" button.
We select the folder on the hard drive where we want to install the program, leave it as it is, by default. Click "Next".
The next window prompts us to enter the name of the program. Leave the default and click "Next".
In this window, the checkbox next to "Greate a desktop icon" should be checked by default. We leave it, otherwise we will not see a shortcut on the desktop. Click "Next".
In the next window, click on the "Install" button. Nothing complicated, the usual process of installing any program or game, if you have already decided to learn how to save drivers and at the same time are going to reinstall Windows, then you are undoubtedly an experienced user and therefore you should not have any problems.
Note: During the installation of the program, a message should appear stating that the drivers will be indexed, which is necessary during the first installation of the program. Click "OK". The mouse cursor will start blinking. Don't worry, it's just that the program starts to perform the necessary procedures for its further work.
See screenshots below.
Upon completion of the installation of the program, click "Finish".
Working with the DriverMax program: saving drivers
Launch the DriverMax program shortcut on the desktop. Actually, this is our main program window. Depending on the version, the program interface may differ, but the essence of working with the program remains the same.
In the program window, we find the second category " driverbackupandrestore", click on it. From the provided list, we are interested in " Backup drivers". Let's go over it.
By clicking on the "Next" button, immediately after the greeting, the program will search for installed drivers. We wait until the message "Listing devices" disappears from the screen and a list of drivers appears. See the picture below.
After the program has found all installed drivers on your computer, click on the “Select all” button, that is, select all the drivers that we want to save, or put a tick against each driver, that is, we make a selection. Selected all required drivers? Then click "Next".
The matter remains small, we have practically already come to the end of this procedure. Our next step is to save the drivers. By default, the program offers to save the drivers in the My Documents folder. I strongly recommend that you do not save them there, since the My Documents folder is a system folder. After reinstalling Windows, you will lose your drivers and your work will be in vain. Save the drivers to another disk partition or to a storage medium (flash drive, etc.). See the picture below.
This is how the copy process looks like:
I think everyone will understand that the last step is a window with a message about successful copying, click the "Close" button.
Now we can go to our folder and make sure that our drivers have been saved in full. We look.
Installing drivers through the program
And so, we have drivers. We learned how to save drivers, which means that after reinstalling Windows, we will not be upset if we make sure that there is no sound or another non-working component in our system. How do we install drivers now?
We can install the drivers that we saved in two ways. The first way to install drivers is directly with DriverMax. If you want to install drivers through the DriverMax program, then go into the program and select the "Restore drivers from backup" item.
Next, we prompt the program for a daddy with our drivers and wait. Using this method is extremely inconvenient, since you need to install this program on your computer. Good way for beginners, but you can do a little more correctly.
The second way to install drivers does not require any specialized programs, since this function is completely standard and, as I said, quite reliable.
Right-click, click on the icon "My Computer" - "Properties", in context menu select "Device Manager". If you have a device that requires a driver or update, it will look like yellow color. Select it and click "Update Driver".
A window will appear in front of our eyes in which we must select "Search for drivers on this computer." Next, the wizard will ask you where to install. At this point, specify the drivers that have been saved.
If you may be asked "Install the driver anyway" or not install. Choose to install.
Read more about installing drivers: "". OK it's all over Now. The instruction "How to save drivers when reinstalling Windows" has come to an end. I wish you less problems with drivers.
