This tutorial will take you through the steps required to backup every device driver that your PC uses, and then restore them if needed.

Why it’s a good idea to have a backup of your drivers: In many cases a driver can become corrupted, and in some cases cause serious system instability. Problems range from being unable to go online (corrupted Ethernet, Wireless Card or modem driver), video flickering, color problems, screen resolution problems (corrupted video card driver) etc. Also, there are times when vendors release new drivers that aren’t entirely stable. If you install the ‘latest’ version of that driver, you may find that your system becomes unstable. By being able to easy able to restore drivers, or revert to an earlier version, can save a lot of headaches.

1. First up, download and install DriverMax. It’s a free program, but to use it for more than 30 days you need to register it (which again, is still free). Just use a ‘throw-away’ email address when you register to receive a free product key.
2. The installation process is quite simple. You’ll be asked to click “Next” a bunch of times. Towards the end of the installation, you’ll receive a message stating that DriverMax will now start indexing your drivers. It doesn’t take too long, but it can appear that the program has stopped working. This is normal, so just give it a few minutes to do its thing.


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3. A little animated image and timer will appear as your drivers are indexed. Again, don’t be surprised if the timer seems to ’stop’ for a while.



4. Once the indexing has been completed you’ll be presented with a screen reminding to register (again, free). Feel free to do so now, otherwise just click the Continue evaluation button.


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5. From the main DriverMax window, select Driver operations and then Export drivers.


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6. Review the initial ‘Export drivers wizard’ screen, and then click Next.


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7. Now it’s time to review exactly which drivers you want to back up. If you want to play it completely save, select them all by clicking the Select all button. However, a number of them will be Default Windows drivers – and these are less critical to back up.


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8. If you only want to back up the non-Windows default drivers, scroll through the list and place a check in the box next to each driver that’s NOT labeled This is a default Windows driver.

   Once you’ve selected what you want to back up, click the Next button.


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9. You’ll be asked where you want to save the backed up drivers. The default location of a My Drivers folder placed inside your My Documents folder is as good as any, but at some point it’s probably a good idea to backup the My Drivers folder to an external drive (USB thumb drive, CD-R etc). When you’re ready, click Next.


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10. Finally, your drivers will be backed up. The process doesn’t take long, but will vary based on how many drivers your system has, and how many you opted to backup.


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11. Once completed, click the Close button. That’s it – your drivers are all now safely backed up!


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12. Should something go wrong in the future and you need to restore a driver, simply launch DriverMax again, and this time select Driver operations -> Import drivers. If you’re using Vista, you will be asked to re-launch the program in Administrator mode (and they provide a button to do just that) as soon as you click Import drivers. Follow the on-screen instructions (which are arguably easier than the ones required to do the backup) and you’ll be back in business. A reboot will probably be required.


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