Backup Drivers Question

[MadBoy]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to write program to backup drivers from working or non-working system. I've been reading a bit and looking in inf files and it seems I've some unanswered questions. My aproach to backup is looking at

Windows\Inf folder. I list all inf files and read all of them. Lets take for example this:

[sourceDisksNames]

3426=windows cd

[sourceDisksFiles]

WSDScDrv.dll=3426

[DestinationDirs]

DefaultDestDir = 11

WSDScanDriver.CopyFiles = 11

Now i know i have to backup WSDScDrv.dll file which should be located Windows\System32 folder (as 11 means it's System32 folder). However the file is not there, it can be found at C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\wsdscdrv.inf_x86_neutral_93205116e7f7a608 (Windows 7)

So my question is how can i really tell where the file is at (well i can look for it if it's only way). According to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms790174.aspx the 11,12 etc numbers point to specific locations but so far only 12 means it's in the right place.

Hope someone can share some light on this, this would help in writting a nice backup program for all Windows systems from WinXP to Win 7 :-)

[SyntaxError]

I can't help with your tool, but I can tell you there are plenty of tools already available that do the same job, some free, some not.

Also, you can't depend on the .inf file to get a complete file list of a particular driver. Most of the time you can, but not always.

I'm pretty sure it was Nvidia's GeForce drivers awhile back that I discovered this with. I don't remember specific versions, but it was consistent across several consecutive releases. Think it was in the late 170.xx series.

There was a single file not listed in the .inf that would get installed and without it, there would be errors. Don't remember the name of the file though, as it's been a long time since I've bothered working with drivers in that manner.

I think my Realtek lan driver had the same issue as well.