Demetri,
I learned this tip from an old PCWorld magazine to
which I subscribe & has saved my butt a couple of
times, especially when you know the system is full of
proprietary drivers. I'm assuming you want to do this
in Win98 or 98SE.

You'll find the files you need to save in your
C:\Windows\System, C:\Windows\Inf, and C:\Windows\Help
folders.

You got a spare drive to which you can copy them all
into d:\drivers? About 150Mb max. is all you need to
copy these files into it and save for when you
reinstall. Just slave this other drive temporarily for
this purpose.

After formatting & reloading your OS all you need to do
then is right-click My Computer and select Properties.
Click the Device Manager tab. Now examine the listing
for each type of device you've retained and for which
Windows did not install a driver. If the device does
not have the correct name--for instance, if your
display adapter is identified as 'VGA Monitor'--or if
it has a yellow question mark/exclamation point icon,
then you will need to install the old driver.

Double-click the device's listing to bring up the
device's properties. Then click the Driver tab,
followed by the Update Driver button. The resulting
wizard will ask, 'What do you want Windows to do?'
Select Search for a better driver. When the wizard asks
where to search, check Specify a location, then uncheck
any other checked options, and enter the path to where
you saved the above mentioned files.

Follow the rest of the wizard, answering each question
according to your best judgment.

Once you have the drivers for all your devices in
place, you can delete the saved folders in D:\drivers.

Option 2:
Google yourself a copy of windrvexpert.zip, shareware
and use it to extract a copy of your drivers & copy &
save those, as above. To install the drivers follow the
same instructions above for Device Manager. The program
is self-explanatory.

BW
Tomas Santos
[log in to unmask]
----------------------------------------------------
In PCBuild Demetri wrote:

>>Is there some good way to save drivers before format
and reinstall OS?
Keeping copies in folder, and copying folder to disk,
occurs, but some
drivers are on CD, some on floppies, some were
downloads, some from
Windows, etc.

Demetri Kolokotronis<<

__________________________________________________________
Get your FREE personalized e-mail at http://www.canada.com

            Do you want to signoff PCBUILD or just change to
                    Digest mode - visit our web site:
                   http://freepctech.com/pcbuild.shtml