Dissatisfied with both freeware and commercial driver backup applications I wrote my own for personal and work use.

The biggest difference is that instead of relying on what is stored within Windows in regards to driver files it locates the install INF and then gathers the files from the files listed in it.

This has only been tested in 32 bit Windows XP. It may work in other version of Windows but I have no way to test. If you do and it works post here and I will update this post accordingly.

Requirements:
Must be run with administrative permissions
.NET 1.1

Recommend 1025x768 resolution

How to use:
If you want the Microsoft drivers uncheck 'Non-Microsoft drivers only'
Click 'Scan System'
Highlight listed drivers you wish to backup
Enter path to backup drivers to
Click 'Backup Now'

Each driver will be backed up to its own folder inside of the folder you select named by what is shown on the screen.

Update Log:
v.79b - 10/12 - 98
- fixed resoltion issues
- added additional logging

v.78b - 10/6 - 34
- fixed inf filname missing when no cat file found
- change 'browse' to start ad desktop
- modified data store

v.77b - 10/5 - 30
- Changed fonts to be static sizes.
- added select all button
- added additional error checking for folder creation

Good piece. I hope it will work well with creative audio drivers. They are rather tricky to backup and restore.

OMG this is awesome... Been looking for something like this for ages to make my own BTS DriverPack's.

Thank you IcemanND for sharing this with us.

@clavicle - let me know I no longer have a machine with a Creative card so I can't test it.

@IceMan: nice idea. I tried your program but eh it didnt work. When i have choosen few devices, set right path and stated your program i got error saying


Click to view attachment


To make polish story short it says Script Error from internet Explorer.


And btw can you give me more info how you are backing up drivers? With steps prefered. I wanted to include this feature in my program Hardware instaler that is on this forum with Sticky.

Thanks,

Thanks for sharing, mon!

Trying it out as we speak...One typo noted in "Driver is unsigned, not catalog file available."

Also had to drop my font size setting back to the default from "Use Extra Large Fonts" so the controls on the top and bottom of the screen would show.

@madboy - what is the name of the driver it was attempting to back up? And did it contain any special characters, that would not be allowed in a file or directory name? And What directory are you backing up to? I thought I had removed all of the special characters and replaced them with underscores but where it says it is failing is on creating the folder to back up to.

@ P51D - Thanks type will be fixed in the next version. I'll see if I can fix the font size issue.


How it does it:
First it uses WMI to query Win32_PnPEntity to collect information on installed hardware.
Then using this it creates a directory named after the hardware description. If the folder already exists it deletes it and its contents first the recreates it.
Then searches for the INF file based on the information returned by the WMI call.
THen I parse the INF file to find what files are installed when using the INF and search for each first in the default install location and then on the entire boot drive for the file if not found in the appropriate windows subfolder.
then copy that file to the previously created folder
When the CAT file is found it is renamed to match what is listed in the INF, and I rename the INF to the same name also rather than have OEMXX.inf in all of the folders.
then repeat for the next selected driver.

I updated the coded to fix the font problem and added some additional error checking for folder creation.

Oh, and a select all button.

@IcemanND

The program has copied all the creative drivers, but the OS doesn't install drivers from backed up folder, both in unattended mode using, winnt.sif and manually after installation.

Secondly, the names inf files of couple of drivers are truncated. Like that of of creative and my TV Tuner card. What I get in backed up directory is only inf.

Are the files in the picture all of the files found? No CAT file?

hmmm this looks cool!

unfortuantly it seems to lock up whenever i run the backup......
it gets to creating the folder for my all-in-wonder x800 driver and starts analizeing like oem6.inf then bombs out,

like so

it does take awhile however to do this.

when i selected only my nforce networking controller i got this


this is a good idea tho i think, just needs a little tweaking

Edit-
almost forgot, take a look at the browse button dialog.... for some reason i can select to expand file like folders from it, i think it'd be nice if it started from the desktop too.

Yes there are no cat files. The error was shown while compiling the drivers' backup.

All the files backed-up shown in the attachment.

Bound to find some bugs when you give it to the public to use on evedry piece of hardware out there. I only have access to a couple dozen different machine models.

@ clavicle - I think I found the problem you discovered. As soon as I find Spazmires I'll post an update, probably tomorrow morning.

@ spazmire - Two things can you email me the system_scan.csv file from your temp folder. and also I need the complete display name in the device manager for your network card. And I'll see if I can track down what happened there.

@clavicle have you tried renaming your driver folders removing the spaces.

Spaces in the path should make no difference whatsoever. I regularly backup the drivers to a folder on my desktop with multiple spaces in the path. And every driver that gets backed up has spaces in the name of the device which is how the folder is named.

@clavicle - If you rename the INF for your Audigy to audigy.inf do the drivers work?

@spazmire - I'm not sure what is happening with the problems you are seeing. the GUID that comes up as being unable to create folder is not a guid in the CSV file you sent me so I'm not sure where it even got it from in the first place. Once you click scan system all the information is either pulled from the CSV file or the related INF once that is located. And any folders are created before the INF is even searched for. I'll keep looking to see what I can find though.

@IceMan: i doubt it's due to polish chars. Right now i choose MOBILITY RADEON and before i choose Backup dir i clicked Backup Now. Same error. Even if i don't choose anything and click Backup i get that error too :|
BTW. What's your programming experience with DLL CALLs and stuff like that?

v78 beta released

@madboy - I more programming experience than I admit to anyone. It's not something I do on a regular basis. I do it when I find something I need/want to do but can't find anything else that does the job I want. But I've been programming for more than 20 years in 8 languages. This is actually a small part of a much larger program I am working on.

@IceMan

1. I keep getting same error :| Dunno what's wrong with it.
2. One suggestion, name your file with versions. So IE or Mozilla or some Proxy wouldn't cache it so one wouldn't use old bin by accident.

Driver Backup Control Panel addon

Thank you IcemanND for giving me permission to make this, Great work on the program dude

App keeps giving errors on multiple systems ( WINXP_SP2_DOTNET.v1.1 \ 2.0 + all updates )

I haven't been able to figure out what goes wrong, but somehow things get messed-up.

I added a screenshot of the error...anyone having this issue too? + a solution?

Thx in advance;)


Click to view attachment

@ vaternl - I believe it's fixed. try new version .79 and let me know.

Thx

I will have a look and let you know about my findings;)


##update##

Sorry m8....it still keeps crashing with script errors.
I only could run this app once succesfully - actually, it only ran great at the very first time I tried it on a XP box.

If you would like to have some more info...just let me know and I will collect it;)

I found a freeware package called DriverMax which does a fantastic job. In fact I use this to extract installed drivers & use them to create customised FULLY unattended installation CDs for the clients for their specific machines. Works absolutely flawlessly.

Please, can you post a link for DriverMax?
Thanks

http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/

I tried it and it does not compare to IcemanND's Driver Backup... It wants to back up everything and theres no way to tell it to only back up the non Microsoft Drivers...

Sorry for the bump but this is great

@IcemanND

Great idea with great potential. I really like the idea of such a tool.

I tried this tool a while back. I tested it on a Dell Latitude D410 notebook and selected to backup ALL non-Microsoft drivers. I thought it hung, so I aborted it and never tried it again

Just now I just gave it another try, using the same system but this time I backed up only one driver.



The first driver I ask it to backup took over 5 minutes just to backup 3 tiny files:



What's taking so long?

there's a utility called double driver, it's freeware, extremely effective and used by the PE community for some time. It's my personal choice anyway.

I am sure there are alot of similar programs out there. I personally use Driver Genius Professional for the last few years.





It is no doubt the best on the market. It can backup, backup to zip, backup to self-extracting EXE, backup to auto-install EXE, search, download and update new drivers, etc, etc, etc, It's only US30 for the Pro - I think it's well worth it.

But I am constantly looking for one that is good, stable, AND FREE FOR COMMERCIAL use (for work really). So far I have yet to find such a thing. Sorry, Double Driver is light years away...

Double driver misses a lot of files.
Driver genius isn't free for the full version, and I've had the free version miss files.

Mine is free for anyone to use, and though it may still have a few bugs, it will pull all of the files for a driver that it finds.

I'm currently working on an updated version which is faster. The file search is the slowest part of the application and I've managed to narrow the searches and speed them up but there are still a few issues before I release it for general consumption.

Using driverbackup79
Running Win2k sp4

Hit scan machine and got;

d-link dfe-530tx+ pci adapter
dell p991
nvidia geforce2 gts/geforce2 pro
via bus master ide controller
via cpu to agp controller
via standard cpu to pci bridge
win2000 promise ultra 100 ide controller(pdc20265)

Hit backup drivers and got;

backup path: c:\driverbackup
working folder: c:\docume~1\admini~1\locals~1\temp
listbox line: d-link dfe-530tx+ pci adapter
driver caption: d-link dfe-530tx+ pci adapter
locating drivers for d-link dfe-530tx+ pci adapter
creating folder: c:\driverbackup\d-link dfe-530tx+ pci adapter
oem10.inf

Then it stops with an internet explorer script error.

!An error has occured in the script on this page.

line: 2029
char: 2
error: could not complete the operation due to error 80041017
code: 0
url: file://c:\documents and settings\administrator\local
settings\application data\compiledScriptHTA

Happens every time backing up 1 driver, several, or all.
I'm hoping the next version will fix it.

elbrute

Never been tested with W2k, at least to my knowledge.
v2 should work with 2k, hope to release it by the end of the week.

Excellent. I'll be watching for it.

I too am looking forward to this working in Windows 2000. Looks like a great tool. And maybe this thread should be made "sticky"?

You want to replace any \ with \\ in your code because \ refers to a command

Version 2 which is almost complete has been completely rewritten from beginning to end. I hope to have it finalized and ready for alpha testing by the end of the first week of January.

I'm getting an error every time I press backup.

Line: 1897
Char: 5
Error: No value given for one or more required parameters
Code: 0

Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?

YES/NO


And when I press yes nothing happens.

When I press backup again there comes other error message.

Line 1882
Char 3
Error: Operation is not allowed when the object is open
Code 0

YES / NO

And I can not do anything with this prog.

Excellent app, looking forward to the new version

Yeah, what's the IE scipt errors? Nice that you are making something I've wanted for ages but Driver Genius 2005 Pro works for me each time.

Are you using Windows 2000? If so, that's why.

Awesome utility. Have you thought about making this tool available under knoppix? Its nice to be able to boot into windows and run driverbackup but what if its so far gone you cant?

John

I really like your program. Nice and simple and to the point with no bull.

I do have an error though when trying to backup Cam driver. Can you help please?
thanks

Just wanted to know when will this wonderfull Utility be Updated.

Regards
Gururaja

Trying to run driverbackup79.exe I'm getting an application error: Cannot install the apllication properly (0xc0000135).

Click to view attachment

What's wrong / how can this be fixed?

you may need .net installed

Thanks urie. Will do that en try again.

hi IcemanND! i'll be trying this out ... i tried recently double driver but it couldn't retrieve my SB sound driver for XP ... it got the driver for 2K but not what my card requires ... i have to manually install the specific XP driver after OS install ... hope this would be good for me ... thanks!

I just had occasion to use this for the first time. Works great, thanks!!

Do you have the new version ready soon, since this one won't work in Finnish Windows XP.