Skip to content

win-export-drivers

In Windows, drivers are usually stored in the following directories:

  • C:\Windows\System32\Drivers
  • C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore
  • C:\Windows\System32\DRVSTORE (not always present)

In particular, on Windows 10 / 11, in C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository you should see a subdirectory for each installed driver. Each subdir should contain an .inf file that describes the driver and the device(s) it's designed for.

If you have Git Bash installed and you want to find the driver(s) for a specific device by its hardware ID, you can use a command like this:

Bash
1
grep -IRi --include='*.inf' --color DEV_1C03 /c/Windows/System32/DriverStore

However, that might not find anything, because the .inf files often use UTF-16 encoding, which might be unsupported by grep. To overcome this limitation, you can change your command like this:

Bash
1
grep -IRai --include='*.inf' --color D.E.V._.1.C.0.3 /c/Windows/System32/DriverStore

Once you find the drivers you're looking for, you can copy them to a USB stick pendrive, insert it into another PC and install the driver(s) there, by selecting the pendrive location when Windows asks for a directory to "find the drivers automatically".