windows drivers and such

[king_arthur]

I know this is not music related at all, but maybe somebody here knows about this and can help... I've mentioned before that my wife and I collect used computers and reload / rebuild them to donate to church-related causes here and in Mexico.

Frequently, somebody will donate a computer which still has a ton of their own personal files on it, but which also has all the drivers for the weird hardware they've installed in the box. Obviously, they don't want their checkbook files sent to somebody in Mexico...

A friend told me that if I started out with a fresh Windows installation and then mounted the old user disk as a second drive, that when the machine is asking for drivers for all this weird hardware, that I can point it at D:Windows (or somewhere) and get the drivers installed on the new OS disk by snarfing them off the old C: drive. And then the old C: drive gets unmounted and removed, but the drivers are still there and working.

I'm trying this now (Windows 98) and having no luck coming up with any of the missing driver files, and, admittedly, I don't really understand the process by which driver files get put "in place" so they're picked up at the appropriate time...

Anyway, just wondering whether anybody is familiar with how this works, or could point me to a webpage which would give me some clues. An overview of how driver installation works that would give me some hints as to where to go look for the appropriate files on the old C: disk. Or to let me know that it ain't gonna work...

Thanks in advance,
Charles

[Märk]

If it doesn't know what it's installing, you have to clue it in via .inf files... when it does the initial 'Found New Hardware' thing, tell it to search for drivers in (whatever drive letter the old drive is):\Windows\inf

When it asks for the file locations, browse to (whatever drive letter the old drive is):\Windows\System and sometimes \System32

Good luck.