How can I use (transfer) drivers that are installed on PC on another PC?

[AKautz]

Hello,

I have a customer who's current Pentium 2 system is running very slow under Windows 98. After running ScanDisk, Defrag, System File Check, checking Virtual Memory, booting in Safe Mode, etc., and noticing no improvement, I ran a benchmark program called Performance Test ( <a href="http://www.passmark.com" target="_blank">http://www.passmark.com</a> ). Using Performance Test I discovered the drive has very slow seek times, so I installed the drive in a Pentium 3 system he had sitting around collecting dust, to see if it was a motherboard problem in the P 2. It was not. The drive seemed to be just as slow in the P 3 as in the P 2. To solve this problem fairly quickly, he wants to use another hard drive (which has a clean install of Windows 98) in the second P 3, and use the sound card and modem from the P 2 in the P 3. The problem is, he can't locate the necessary driver disks for the modem and sound card. The old hard drive from the P 2 has the correct drivers for the modem and the sound card already installed on it, but I have not been able to locate any of the .INF files on the old hard drive. Quite unexpectedly however, I came across what looks like a great free program called ShadowX's Driver Backup Expert ( <a href="http://shadowx5.tripod.com" target="_blank">http://shadowx5.tripod.com</a> ) for transferring drivers from one PC to another. The only problem is, ShadowX cannot transfer specific drivers (it's all or nothing). Therefore, I was wondering if there is anyway to transfer SPECIFIC already INSTALLED device drivers from one PC to another. I know how to view the location of and how to copy the installed device drivers, but because they are .VXD and .DRV files (instead of .INF files), Windows apparently does not recognize them as valid drivers when I try installing them on the other machine.

Sincerely,
Adam Kautz

[Archer]

An option would be to ghost the drive and rebooting will cause the removal of unwanted drivers and request installation of valid drivers for the newer hardware.

[AKautz]

Good idea, but what may appear to be a hard drive problem on the slow drive might actually be a corrupted Win 98 and therefore ghosting it to the other drive would also ghost all the things which are causing the slow performance, which would make the fast drive slow. Since the customer already has a clean install of Win 98 on the one drive, I would rather not take the chance of ghosting a corrupt Win 98 over top of the clean 98, which would then require me to do a clean reinstall of Win 98 and would put me back at square one.
Adam

[quote]Originally posted by Andi:
<strong>An option would be to ghost the drive and rebooting will cause the removal of unwanted drivers and request installation of valid drivers for the newer hardware.</strong><hr></blockquote>

[Gabriel]

Those Customer Never cease to amaze me...
The person has One Hard drive which works fine, the other with all the crap Doesn't.
This seems like a very "Complicated" Problem to solve, Isn't it?

[meph]

you should be able to find the drivers under the c:\windows\inf\other directory on the old drive

[AKautz]

Thanks for the advice Meph, but when I tried installing the driver for the modem from the INF file that is on the old P2 hard drive, it still requests the original driver diskette.

Since there doesn't seem to be a way to do what I want to do (I even tried ShadowX's program which does not run because it says it's missing a file), I'm just going to try getting the original drivers off the manufacturer's sites.

Never the less, I thank everyone who took time to offer their advice!

Sincerely,
Adam Kautz

[da_grinch]

Do you people forget what site you are on? This is the place to find almost all drivers for almost anything. Go to the advanced driver search on the home page and enter the FCC ID number if you don't know the manufacturer's name and follow the links. If that doesn't work, try this site:

<a href="http://www.driverguide.com" target="_blank">http://www.driverguide.com</a>