When I clean install a Windows computer, finding and installing the proper drivers is always the annoying thing for me to do. It’d be nice if there is an easy way to save all the drivers that work on the current system so I don’t have to go through the same process finding them again next time when I re-install the system.
Well, there is a way and it’s a very easy straightforward way that I never thought of before.
Launch Windows PowerShell as Administrator. You can do so by pressing Win+X and select Windows PowerShell (Admin) from the menu that pops up.
And use the Export-WindowsDriver cmdlet to back up all of your drivers to a folder or a USB device. For example, the following command backs up all the drivers from my current running system into a folder called Drivers on a USB drive.
Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination y:\Drivers
Then, here is what looks like in the folder that has all the drivers saved.
Later on when you need to install these drivers on a new installed system, you can insert the USB drive and specify the location for Device Manager to search for the driver.
You can also use the same cmdlet to export the drivers from an offline image file as well, such as this to export third-party drivers from an offline image mounted at c:\offline-image.
Export-WindowsDriver -Path c:\offline-image -Destination y:\Drivers
Great! This help me a lot.
Get an error message “The term `Export-WindowsDriver` is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, …”
It only works on Windows 8.1 and above out of the box.
Doesn’t work on Windows 10 Pro
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PS C:\Windows\system32> Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination D:\Drivers
Export-WindowsDriver : The request is not supported.
At line:1 char:1
+ Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination D:\Drivers
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Export-WindowsDriver], COMException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Dism.Commands.ExportWindowsDriverCommand