I want to back up all of my drivers

General Questions
#1

I am thinking it’s about time to do a good re-format on that ol’ machine. There’s lingering spyware despite all my best efforts, corrupted files preventing me from uninstalling (or reinstalling) software, and myriad other reasons. The problem is, my mother has long lost the factory disc that came with machine, and there’s been plenty of hardware changes since then anyway.

Is there an easy way to back up all of the current drivers to a CD so that I can just load them back in after reformatting?

#2

No.

You need more than the files, assuming that you knew all of their names and where they were located. There is a great deal of critical information in the registry that will be lost when you reinstall.

#3
  1. Your best bet is to save all of the data you wish to keep.
  2. Buy, borrow, beg or steal a copy of the OS originally installed on the machine.
  3. Proceed to load the system and hopefully all will be well!
    It would have been helpful had you supplied the make of PC, the CPU, and OP.
#4

Sorry - It’s a Sony Vaio Desktop, loaded with Windows XP.

I have the OEM disk of XP so I’m not worried about replacing my OS - just don’t feel like having to hunt down the drivers that I’ll need to reinstall that aren’t on the XP disk, like my graphics card, webcam, digital camera, etc.

#5

If you have the OEM XP disk that came with the machine, it may contain the drivers you need. If not, go to the manufacturer’s Web site, and find the support/downloads page. Locate the drivers you need, and download them.

Depending on the vendor’s site, you may be able to enter the machine serial number and get a listing of exactly which drivers your machine requires.

#6

Hit “Submit” too soon…

I did this this afternoon, with a fiver-year old Gateway, entered the serial number, downloaded the correct video driver, and had it up and running in minutes.

#7

Yeah I had that option with my Gateway - a customized page online that had every driver that came on the original system restore disk. A beautiful thing. I hadn’t thought of calling Vaio to see if they could do something for me, because she bought it in a Sam’s Club. I’ll have to give them a shout.

#8

before you do something rash:

look under control panel > system > hardware > device manager and write down what your network adapter card is.

Go to the mfr and download the driver to diskette or CD or something.

You’ll likely need it to download that other stuff.