Solved Extracting drivers

[antares]

Hi, I'll be upgrading my PC hardware and plan to use Acronis Universal Restore. It instructs to extract drivers for the new hardware (chipset, etc) to obtain the inf, oem or sys files. Problem is that I see no files with those extensions when unzipping the exe files for the drivers. Any hint? Thanks

 

[broe23]

If you are upgrading hardware, the question comes to mind as to what hardware are you replacing. If it is a Motherboard, the Hard drive will attempt to figure out the specifics for the Motherboard. But you will have to reactivate the OS.

Really no one can answer your questions, without exact specifics as to the exact type of hardware you are replacing.

 

[KYHI]

The link you provided is for the drivers for that Motherboard, depending on the OS..

After you use Acronis Universal Restore to restore the HDD - you would then have to Run all the Drivers .exe programs for that MOBO...
Acronis Universal Restore will create a recovery image that was run through Sysprep, thus removing identifiers

If you are changing the MOBO - there will be an activation issue - and re-activation will be a no go if OS is of the OEM type

 

[antares]

Hi, my current system is under "My System Specs". I will be replacing the Asus P8Z77V-Deluxe/Intel i7 3770K with the Asus Z170-A/Intel i7 6700K. I want to keep using my current Windows 8.1x64 OS, so that's the idea behind using Acronis Universal Restore so to avoid the time consuming task of a clean Windows install.
Assuming Acronis UR does its job and I obtain a bootable system with the new hardware, is this procedure to clean all old drivers before installing the new ones the best one?

 

[topgundcp]

Unlike the previous versions of Windows. Windows 8/8.1 is very forgiving and I have done quite few times by cloning a copy of Windows 8.1 on one PC and install the drive to another PC. This practically the same as replacing the MB and other devices and Windows will start and the first screen you'll see is "Getting Devices Ready" which in fact Windows is gathering and installing the new drivers for the new MB and devices. You should not have to use Acronis to do this. Of course once Windows up and running, all drivers related to the old MB will be orphans and hidden, you would have to do some clean up to remove those old drivers. In addition, you would have to re-activate it.

Make sure you make a backup image of your current working Windows or clone it to another drive, Just in case.

 

[antares]

Thanks topgun, that's easier. I was thinking, before cloning the current OS to the new drive, I could uninstall all drivers using Device Manager in my current system, so that they won't show as hidden in the new one, in this way I could save having to clean the drivers in the new system before installing the new ones. Sounds good?

 

[topgundcp]

Just do what I suggested above. Once Windows is up and running. Download a portable version:
GhostBuster - Download: GhostBuster Setup (110700)
Put it on the desktop, right click and run as Admin, click on Remove Ghosts. Those hidden drivers should be gone.

 

[antares]

Thanks again, looks like a nice utility!
UPDATE: I tested the utility in a notebook and it will not remove all hidden drivers, it only deletes some of them, even after several passes.

 

[topgundcp]

Thanks again, looks like a nice utility!
UPDATE: I tested the utility in a notebook and it will not remove all hidden drivers, it only deletes some of them, even after several passes.

Those are marked in orange, right click on them->Add Devices then do a Remove.

 

[antares]

I just finished my new system, everything went smoothly, I used Topgun's suggestion, just booted the original SSD in the new system. After a short moment of "Getting Devices Ready", the PC booted into the Desktop, cleaned old drivers with Ghostbuster, installed new drivers and all perfect now. Thanks Topgun, no need to use Acronis or Universal Restore.