Rhuwyn wrote:

I want to do a clean build but really dont want to have to source all the drivers.

Have you tried at all? Since it's a laptop, all the drivers are likely to be in one place.

I wonder if you could rename the Windows directory, reinstall Windows, and then direct Windows to the renamed directory for each of the drivers? Assuming there's enough space, anyway. (You should probably back up the entire hard drive anyway if you're worried about being unable to find something on there again.)

Yeah thats what I'm going to do in liu of another solution. I actually want to install a larger hard drive which was somewhat of a separate discussion. I am sure I can accomplish what I am asking by just backing up everything but for the future I was curious if there was a more elegant solution. Drivers tend to put things in all sorts of places so it's not as simple as backing up the windows directory, at least not in all cases.

Jorpho wrote:

Rhuwyn wrote:

I want to do a clean build but really dont want to have to source all the drivers.

Have you tried at all? Since it's a laptop, all the drivers are likely to be in one place.

I wonder if you could rename the Windows directory, reinstall Windows, and then direct Windows to the renamed directory for each of the drivers? Assuming there's enough space, anyway. (You should probably back up the entire hard drive anyway if you're worried about being unable to find something on there again.)

If you are going to use a larger hard drive, you could pull the current one as-is and put your new one in place for a fresh install. You could hook the old drive up via USB (as needed) for drivers or copy over any data you need (Windows or other directories) since you have more space and file away the old drive as a backup of the old install should you want to revert. Older USB, but serviceable.