Guide to backup and restore device drivers in Windows

If you do a clean install of Windows, you will need to install a driver for each device in your system. Some of these device drivers may no longer be available from the manufacturer or you have mistakenly placed a backup copy of the driver installation file from the manufacturer.

It's a good idea to back up your device drivers before performing a clean install to make it easy to restore any of these drivers if needed later.

This guide will show you how to back up and restore all 3rd party device drivers on a Windows 10 PC.

Note : You must be logged in as an admin to be able to back up and restore the driver.

Backup all device drivers in Command Prompt

Step 1. Open Command Prompt with admin rights.

Step 2. Type one of the two commands below that you want to use into the Command Prompt and press Enter.

dism /online /export-driver /destination:"full path of folder"

Or:

pnputil /export-driver * "full path of folder"

Replace with the full path of the actual existing directory (eg F: Drivers Backup ) where you want to export all the third-party device drivers. If this directory does not currently exist, you will need to create it before running the command. For example:

dism /online /export-driver /destination:"F:Drivers Backup"

Enter the command into the Command Prompt

Step 3. When the export is finished, you can close the Command Prompt if you want.

Step 4. Device drivers will now be exported to the specified folder location, acting as the backup.

The device drivers will be exported to the specified folder location

Backup all device drivers in PowerShell

Step 1. Open PowerShell as admin.

Step 2. Type the command below into PowerShell and press Enter.

Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination "full path of folder"

Replace with the full path of the actual existing directory where you want to export all the third-party device drivers. If this directory does not currently exist, you will need to create it before running the command. For example:

Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination "F:Drivers Backup"

Enter the command into PowerShell

Step 3. When the export is finished, you can close PowerShell if you want.

Step 4. Now, the device drivers will be exported to the specified folder location for the backup role.

The device drivers are in the specified directory

Restore device driver backup in Device Manager

Step 1. Open Device Manager.

Step 2. Right-click or press and hold on the device (eg Intel (R) RealSense (TM) 3D Camera (Front F200) Depth ) where you want to restore the driver backup and select Update driver.

Step 3. Click Manually install a driver .

Step 4. Follow the steps below to select the folder containing the device driver backup above.

1. Click the Browse button .
2. Navigate to and select the folder containing the device backups.
3. Click OK.
4. Check the Include subfolders box .
5. Click Next.

Select the folder that contains the device driver backup

Step 5. Device Manager will now search for and install the device driver if it's newer than what is currently installed.

Step 6. Once you're done restoring the driver backup, you can close Device Manager if you want.

Restore all device drivers in the Command Prompt

Step 1. Open Command Prompt with admin rights.

Step 2. Type the command below that you want to use into the Command Prompt and press Enter.

pnputil /add-driver "full path of folder*.inf" /subdirs /install /reboot

Replace with the full path of the actual folder where you exported all the third-party device drivers. For example:

pnputil /add-driver "E:Drivers Backup*.inf" /subdirs /install /reboot

The / reboot option in the command will automatically restart your computer if needed to complete the driver import operation.

Make sure you save and close everything that is open before running this command.

Step 3. When the import finishes, you can close the Command Prompt if you want.

Good luck !

Kareem Winters

Update 12 August 2020