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Drivers in Windows are specialized software programs that allow the operating system to communicate with and control hardware devices such as printers, graphics cards, keyboards, and network adapters. Without drivers, Windows wouldn’t know how to use the features of the hardware, making them essential for proper device functionality and performance.
When you install Windows on a computer, it will try and configure drivers for your hardware assuming it already has them built into the Windows installation software. If not, then you will need to download any missing drivers from the hardware manufacturers website. Fortunately, you can export or backup your Windows 3rd party drivers and then reinstall one of all of them as needed.
This can come in handy if you need to revert or roll back to an older driver if an update causes problems with your hardware. Or if you need to reinstall Windows on the same computer, you can have a backup of your drivers to reinstall them after Windows is up and running again. If you have bought a new computer or built your own computer with different hardware then this would not be very helpful.
Exporting your Windows 3rd Party Drivers
There are several ways you can go about exporting your Windows drivers so you can have a backup to reinstall later if needed. This process can be done using PowerShell or the Windows command prompt depending on the method you choose.
The first method we will be discussing can only be used with PowerShell running as an administrator. You can type PowerShell in the Windows search box and then choose PowerShell from the results and right click it and choose Run as administrator to open the app. You will then need to type the following command, but you will need to edit the destination directory path to match a folder you have on your computer. You also need to be sure to put the folder path in quotes.
Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination “E:\Backup\Drivers”
You can then go to the folder where you have backed up your drivers to see all the drivers in individual folders. For the most part the folder names will not make much sense or match the hardware devices that the drivers belong to.
The next two methods for exporting your Windows 3rd party drivers can be done via PowerShell or from an administrative command line. Regardless of what method you use, you will get the same results as you saw from the first method.
Here are the commands you can use to backup your drivers. Once again, be sure to change the destination folder path.
dism /online /export-driver /destination:”E:\Backup\Drivers”
pnputil /export-driver * “E:\Backup\Drivers”
You can even run more than one of them and change the destination to compare the results.
Importing your Windows 3rd Party Drivers
When it comes to importing or installing your 3rd party drivers, there are a couple of ways to do so. You can install the drivers for just the one piece of hardware you need to update, or you can install the drivers for all your hardware at once. This would be used after you performed a new Windows installation.
To install just one driver, you can open Device Manger by searching for it in the Windows taskbar search box. Let’s say you need to reinstall the driver for your network adapter because Windows Update installed a new one and it’s making your network connection to have issues.
Once you find the device in the list, simply right click on it and choose Update driver.
Then you will want to choose the option that says Browse my computer for drivers.
Next, you will need to browse to the folder where you have backed up your drivers and be sure that the box that says Include subfolders is checked. You do not need to worry about finding the specific folder that contains the driver for the device you are installing it for.
If the driver from your backup is different from what is already installed on your computer, it will be updated (or downgraded). If the driver is the same as the one from your backup, then you will be shown a message that says The best drivers for your device are already installed.
If you want to install all the 3rd party drivers from your backup, you can do this from Device Manager as well.
To do so, right click on your computer name at the top of Device Manager and choose the Add drivers option.
You will once again need to browse to the location of your backed up drivers and then click the Next button. Windows will then proceed to install all the drivers from your backup folders in one shot assuming the driver is different from what is already installed for the devices.
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