Drivers

[gale]

I purchased a program that would backup my drivers. After looking at the backups they are simply .inf files. When I go into Device Manager a given device has everything from .sys to vxd to dll files. Do I save these files and then use them in conjunction with the BackUp program? I had to reinstall once and the drivers were something else. Thanks.

 

[prime2515102]

The .inf files tell Windows what other files are used with the driver and how to use them among other things (it sets this information up in the registry mostly). So yes, you'll need the other files and when restoring you'll need to put them back exactly where they came from (Windows, Windows/system, windows/system32 etc.).

However, why back them up when you can just download them from the manufacturer's site and just save those? I wouldn't trust something to just put drivers back, I'd reinstall them from scratch.

By the way, what's the name of the program?

Prime

 

[gale]

Jermar Corp-WinDrvrs www.jermar.com/wdrvbck.htm

 

[acidosmosis]

I have to agree with what prime2515102 said, it is pretty pointless to backup those files and the best thing to do is make a backup of the installation files that you originally installed from.

One thing I like to do is create a CD-ROM of all drivers for all my hardware on all my computers. That way when I need them I don't have put in 15 different CD's or download 15 different files I can just load them all from that one CD. (Unless there are updated drivers on the Internet that I choose to use).