Running a later model laptop of the win7 generation now running nicely under 8.1. Now I'm re-paving it and need to ensure that current drivers are available to the next install as painlessly as is possible. I don't want to wade thru the vendor's site hoping to coax them to give me 8.1 stuff when they have me of record at win7.  Is there a single place to go to copy folders off to a USB?
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I want to reinstall Windows on a machine which has some very obscure drivers. I don't much fancy having to hunt round for them (that's if I'm able to locate them at all). Is it possible to save or backup already installed drivers? If so, how do I do this? How do I then go about installing these 'saved' drivers?
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I have an Asus R500VD laptop which came with the preinstalled Windows 8. As actually this computer will be used by my grandmother (and she's only using win 7) I'd like to downgrade it.  Thanks to other thread here, I was able to successfully boot computer from Windows 7 USB stick, but unfortunately during install I got a message:  A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. (...)   and I can't get pass it... This is what I've done:   I've downloaded all drivers from Asus Website (), unzip and copied to visible location for windows 7 installation - I've picked each one of them, none has helped. As I belive it's some kind of problem with SATA/RAID/AHCI drivers I went to Intel site and downloaded various "Intel Rapid Storage Technology" drivers - a lot of them were recognized by win7, but none of them helped.   Does anyone have an idea what can I do next? Any help would be really appreciated.
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I purchased Windows 8 online from Microsoft a while ago. Today Windows 8.1 was released as a free update to Windows 8 users over the Windows Store.  I was planning to do a fresh install of Windows 8.1 to have a clean system again and UEFI support because I got new hardware since the Windows 8 installation.  So my questions are:   Where do I get the ISO installation medium for Windows 8.1 64-bit? I tried  where I initially got my Windows 8 ISO from, but when entering my Windows 8 key in the Windows 8.1 installer, it says the key is wrong. Even if I get the ISO, will my old key work? I'm concerned because it didn't work in their installer (see previous point)   Do they seriously want me to reinstall Windows 8 and after that upgrade to Windows 8.1 through their Store?!
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Possible Duplicate:          What I want to do is to get    Windows 7 installation (both x64 + x86) XP installation SP3 HBCD   All together in 1 USB flash drive. Is there any ready to go image to download?
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I already tried FORMAT /FS:FAT, , Disk Management and .   Do I really need to buy a smaller capacity drive? Can't a formatting tool ignore the area beyond 2&nbsp;GB?  My Asus netbook's BIOS update requires the USB to be formatted as , and I couldn't get the various Asus BIOS update utilities to work.
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I have seen many ways to make a USB an installer for about any Windows OS. But how can I (using grub or something like that) make it bootable to all editions on Windows XP and 7?   I have tried Googling it and researching, I've even tried to do it, But I dont understand much about GRUB or linux at all.  Please keep in mind that I am not very good with linux, so please use as many details as possible.
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Possible Duplicate:             I know there are a lot of tools to create a bootable usb for ubuntu with windows.  But I'm sure, that there was a possibility in the ubuntu installation directory. I used it some time ago, but I can't find it anymore :(  I think it was a .exe, or a .bat, any case a cmd window has opened, some things were executing and the usb was bootable. And it was in the ubuntu directory!  Is there still the possibility to do that? Does that file exist? I unfortunately can't remember.
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I am trying to upgrade my Win7 system to Windows 10 (because I am, apparently, masochistic). It's not working, locking up at about 30 to 35%, requiring me to reset, which then backs out the upgrade.  The whole process takes about three to four hours. A large part of this is having to download 3.5GB of upgrade every time, because Microsoft's tool doesn't cache the install files.  The tool has an option to create a bootable USB stick, which I can use to do an install. This should be way faster.  However, Microsoft seem really firm that if I want to get my free upgrade, I need to pick to 'Upgrade this PC' option from the upgrade tool. This seems peculiar. Can anyone confirm (i.e. who actually knows from first hand knowledge) whether upgrading from a USB stick actually works?
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I am running into a problem with drivers on different versions of Windows. Why are newer versions not backward compatible (to a certain extent)? What changes between verions of windows in the OS that requires different drivers?
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I have a Dell D630 laptop that has Windows 7 Professional on it that was in dire need for replacement so I recently picked up an HP G62 laptop that comes with Windows 7 Home Premium. I don't need both laptops and I'd rather spare myself the time reinstalling all my programs and making sure I didn't forget to migrate any of my data over by simply swapping hard drives from the Dell to the HP.  Well, I tried just that and my HP laptop instantly BSOD'd on startup.  I'm currently running 'Startup Repair' but it's been sitting there for over 20 mins saying &quot;Attempting repairs...&quot; and nothing is really happening so I don't have much faith in this. The good news is that before I swapped the drives I made an Acronis image of the Dell drive and stored it on my NAS so I can pretty much try anything with this drive and still get back to where I was if need be. I find it hard to believe that what I want to do would be rather difficult, although it sure is looking that way.  I'd appreciate any advice in making this happen. Thanks Edit All the answers were great, so thank you.  I accepted djechelon's answer because the Win7 migration tool saved me quite a bit of time.
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I could probably copy the contents from the package, but what is the best way to create an install Flash Drive for Mavericks?  Of course ideally the drive should be bootable.
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I have a different problem that I don't think can be solved but it's better to ask before loosing all hope.  I currently run Crunchbang (Debian dist) and would like to install Windows 7 as well. However, my computer don't have a dvd-reader and all my usb-drives are too small.  Is my only solution to this problem to buy a larger usb-drive?
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Well obviously I can do it manually, I was just wondering why aren't these drivers available through "Additional Drivers", and why are the versions available there outdated.
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I have a load of old external USB hard drives lying around - as I'm sure an increasing number of others do also.  Is there any way I can utilize these to act in some kind of RAID-type system?  Seems a waste to have all that storage lying around in uneven and relatively small chunks.  I'm using Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit.
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Recently, I bought an USB flash drive which has a cool design.  The seller said it is 256GB however, I've already known that capacity would be fake. Anyway, I bought it cause of its cool design and want to use this USB flash drive anyway.  What should I do?  I've tried to find a proper tool(vid 1908 / pid 1320) but couldn't. Can I repair this through Low level format? Or partitioning this through Linux?
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I had to reformat my machine because I had a virus. My machine did not come with a driver disk. How can I install drivers after having reinstalled Windows?
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I've just installed Ubuntu and I need either video, wireless, or some sort of other manufacturer (non-opensource) driver. How can I run the tool that will fetch all of these for me? I'd like graphical instructions.  Related: