Switching HD's, what's best way to keep the drivers?

[bigd480]

I am going from a 30gb w/ 10gb used to a empty 15gb...

i was gonna ghost but now that i think abt it, i'd rather just have a cleanly installed O/S... but I have none of the drivers for the hardware in that computer (just bought it secondhand)...

can i just get by w/ burning a disk of everything in c:\windows\inf and c:\windows\system? thanks for any advice

 

[edmicman]

do you at least know what the hardware is? it wouldn't be too hard to just download the drivers for each piece of hardware and then burn those onto disk.....i don't know if the inf files would work or not

 

[erikistired]

that doesn't work for all hardware. the best thing to do would be make a list of your hardware (while it's still in the device manager) and track down drivers for it.

~erik

 

[bigd480]

yeah that makes sense... what abt a system like a Dell... if you buy one of those secondhand and have to wipe it and reinstall drivers, can you use the regular drivers or are they special Dell ones?

 

[SuperDaveDCF]

Life is like buying a first-tier OEM system, you never know what you're going to get!

Dell and others are buying/building in such large quantities that they often are using
"custom" parts. Dell has a good support site though. You just punch in the serial number
of the machine and it will show you the exact hardware specs. If you have the time, I'd
d/l the latest drivers from Dell as well as try to get them from the individual hardware vendors. When doing the actual install I'd try using the vendors' drivers and fall back
to Dell's if you run into probs.

 

[bigd480]

oh i didnt know u could just DL them from Dell... thanks!