drivers

hello to all again, i have another ? about how to back up my drivers. i have several sound cards that i was given by friends and some that i have picked up along the way and of course i have no software for them. and i want to check them out to see if they work and if they are better than the one i now have in my pc and keep them for spare parts. the problem is that i dont know how to find the driver for the current sound card that i am using and i am afraid that i remove it the add hardware wizard wont recognize it and i wont have adriver to use when i return to the original card. does this make sense? what i thought i would do is first go to files e=drivers then down load them onto c-d. then when i put the old card back and if the wizard cant find it use the c-d for the location. am i right? thanks again roger in sc

 

Forget trying to find all the drivers. You probably have registry entries, DLL's, and several other files that are spread out everywhere. You really need to find the manufacturer's drivers if you want to do it right.

What kind of card are we talking about? I'll bet you can find the drivers very easily (if not at the manufacturer's site, there are plenty of other places to find them.)

BTW, why not just look-up the different types of cards and see which one is better? Swapping them out and trying them is not going to tell you much.

Good luck!

 

thanks for the quick reply, what i really would like to do is find the drivers for all the hardware i am currently using and make back-ups for them. i don't have the software for all of them, and i would like to know how to do it. when i got this pc it already had hardware installed and no software to back it up. and i dont know how to id the cards that i have to search for drivers on the net for them. when i tried to check one of the sound cards the wizard could not find it . thanks roger in sc.

 

What operating system are you using, and what drivers in particular are you wanting?

 

Like I said, forget it. You're not going to find all the drivers on the disk. It's just not possible. You may get lucky and find an INF file, but that's not drivers, you'll still need the actuall VXD files, DLL files, and whatever else is included with the cards drivers. You're not going to find them all.

Now, if you want to ID the card, we can do that. Every piece of hardware has an ID number on it. You'll have to open the case, but you can find out what kind of card you have and who makes it. If nothing else, we'll work backwards from the computer manufacturer and type. Give us some info and we'll help you out.


On the other hand, having said all that. If you just remove the card physically, and you don't uninstall it from Device Manager, the files will still be there and in order when you reinstall the card. Even if you were to install a different card, the files will still be there. However, if you have a card of the same brand or make and install it, it is possible that Windows could overwrite some of the files. But, more than likely, Windows already has drivers for these cards anyway, and you can probably just swap them freely (my guess is they are not very new cards.) But, then again, we have no idea what kind of computer you have or what OS you have, so I can't be sure that it will have drivers for newer cards.

 

Hello;
two cents here. Once the cards are identified then maybe he can find the drivers he needs at www.drivers.com