That is, returning them to the previous version is unique Windows feature, which is supported in all new OS versions.

Windows saves previously installed drivers and allows you to automatically restore them, which makes it possible to significantly save time if it causes system or peripheral devices to malfunction.

To restore the driver:

1. You must enter the operating room Windows system under account administrator.

2. Find the “My Computer” icon, right-click on it and select “Properties” from the drop-down menu.

3. On the “Control Panel” tab, click on the “Device Manager” button.

4. In the list of devices, double-click the branch corresponding to the inoperative device. For example, clicking on the “Video Adapters” branch reveals its contents.

5. Select the device you are interested in and click on it and click “Properties” in the context menu.

6. In the new dialog box, select the “Driver” tab and click “Roll Back”.

7. By clicking “Yes”, confirm your choice in the window containing the message “Are you sure you want to restore the previously installed archived version of the driver?”

8. The previous driver will be restored. Click the close window button. 9. Close the Device Manager window, click the “OK” button and restart Windows.

In the worst case scenario, when the driver fails system devices crashed the entire OS, you can return to driver recovery by booting your computer in safe mode. It is also possible to return the system to the previous operational state using the "Return to Last Known Good Configuration" feature.

The ability to restore a system is an alternative solution that allows you not only to return to the previous hardware configuration, but also to abandon all changes to the software and registry.

Backing up your drivers is a necessary procedure before making any major changes to the system or . This is the best way to restore drivers in case of unforeseen circumstances.

I also advise you to create a copy of the drivers before doing a factory reset. Yes, you can always re-download all the drivers on the laptop manufacturer’s website, motherboard, video cards, etc., and install them. But this process will definitely not bring you any pleasure. You need to know which drivers to download. And as usual, something is not installed all the time and devices do not work.

3 After the copying process is completed, the files will be saved in the folder that we created. In the appropriate folders with the necessary files inside.

The action is completed, now the drivers of interest will be available for the mode manual installation. More on this at the end of the article.

If you're interested, my folder with saved drivers took up as much as 14 GB! I don't know why there are so many.

Using PowerShell to Save Drivers in Windows 10

PowerShell program is a popular automation tool that began to be implemented in the early Windows versions and remains relevant for the 10th version of the system. The program is also multifunctional; it can be used to perform backups, which are performed as follows:

1 Open the program as a PC administrator. The easiest way is to open the search bar and enter the name of the program. After that, you need to right-click on PowerShell and select the appropriate opening method. If you have Windows 10 updated, then just right-click on “Start” and select “Windows PowerShell” (administrator).

2 First create a folder for storing drivers. For example, on drive D called Drivers. Next, you need to enter the command in the line that opens:

Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination D:\Drivers

We are waiting for PowerShell to create a backup copy of the device drivers and save them to the folder that we created. At first glance it may seem that the process is frozen, but this is not the case.

When the report appears, the window can be closed. I will show you below how to restore the drivers.

Using the PnP utility

This program is built into the Windows 10 system and does not need additional installation. Copying drivers is done in the same way. You need to open the command line as a PC administrator, after which you enter the command:

pnputil.exe /export-driver * d:\drivers

As in similar cases, you need to take care of creating a file storage folder in advance. You can save it on any of the disks or flash drive. The command specifies the path to the folder. For me it is “d:\drivers”

We are waiting for the process to complete.

The copying methods described above are the simplest and most optimal. The user does not need to install additional programs, they are basic and always ready for use.

How to restore drivers in Windows 10 from a copy (folder)?

Backup drivers are a real lifesaver after reinstalling the system, allowing you to bring the updated PC into working condition without a lengthy search for the necessary drivers that match the make and model of the computer. The recovery process is quite simple, which consists of the following steps:

Thus, you need to install drivers for all devices. This option cannot be performed comprehensively. As a rule, you only need to install for unknown devices(with a yellow icon) for which Windows 10 could not select and install the driver itself.

Mar 3 2015

How to restore a Windows 7 system on a laptop, a black screen appears when booting, the recovery environment does not work, I deleted all hidden partitions, original disc no with Windows 7.

I spent a lot of time, tell me what to do now, or at least how to insure myself against such situations in the future, preferably without using paid programs backup data.

How to restore Windows 7 system

Unfortunately, there are many reasons for this problem, ranging from incorrectly written drivers, harmful effects of a virus, errors file system and ending with our erroneous actions when working with a computer, there is no need to be afraid of such problems, you need to learn how to deal with them effectively.

Let's think about how to restore a Windows 7 system, and also insure ourselves in the future against possible troubles using the backup and recovery tools built into the operating system.

We will learn how to restore Windows 7 without using third party programs for backup even when the System Recovery Options are not loaded and the F-8 button will be useless.

Has in its arsenal quite powerful and good tool-> Recovery environment, which is created automatically when installing Windows 7 in a hidden partition and contains five other tools that solve numerous malfunctions and problems.

Note: If you learn to use the tools correctly Windows recovery 7, and this is not difficult, you can do without additional and paid data backup programs.

You can launch the recovery tool by pressing the F-8 button on the keyboard immediately after starting the computer. After this, the menu Additional boot options will open in front of you: Troubleshoot your computer, then Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Boot network drivers etc.

A small digression: Before selecting Troubleshoot your computer, try the easier option - Last Known Good Configuration - in simple words, operating system always remembers the last successful boot of the computer and enters this information into the registry.

If there are problems loading, Windows can remember the registry settings and driver settings that were used when the system was last successfully booted and use them if you select the Last Known Good Configuration option.

If this tool does not help, select the first -> Troubleshoot computer problems.

Next, we get to the Windows 7 System Recovery Options menu, this is what we need, this is where we can select the System Restore tool we need, there are five in total, let’s take a closer look at how they all work.

The first thing to do is apply Startup Repair (Automatically fix problems that prevent Windows from starting).

Required digression: After pressing the F-8 button when booting the computer, you may not have the item > Troubleshoot your computer, but only Safe Mode and so on, the question arises why.

When installing Windows 7, a recovery environment partition is created automatically and is located in the root of the drive (C:) in the Recovery folder. You can also see in the Disk Management window - separate, hidden section hard drive, its capacity is only 100 MB, it is used to store boot configuration files (BCD) and the system boot loader (bootmgr file).

You can see it under Computer->Management->Disk Management. Under no circumstances should you delete this partition (many people delete it out of ignorance), otherwise you will not have the recovery environment start, that is, you will not have the Troubleshoot your computer option, and in more severe cases, you simply will not boot the system.

In the lower screenshot you can see another hidden partition, with a capacity of 9.02 GB, this is a hidden recovery partition with factory settings on my laptop, yours may be larger or smaller. It’s also better not to delete it; if necessary, you can always restore Windows 7 from it.

What should you do if you do not have a partition with a recovery environment and when you press the F-8 button in the Additional boot options menu, the Troubleshooting computer option does not appear? How then to restore the Windows 7 system?

An installation disk with the Windows 7 operating system can help here. You can run the recovery tool by booting from the original installation Windows disk 7, selecting System Restore at the very beginning.

If installation disk s you don’t have, then you can use the Windows 7 Recovery Disk (you can make it in any running Windows 7) in five minutes, then you can also boot from it and do the same.

So we finally got to the System Recovery Options, either using the F-8 button and the Troubleshooting item, or the Windows 7 installation disk or the Windows 7 Recovery Disk.

In the System Restore Tools Selection menu, select the first one:

Startup recovery-> there will be an analysis of faults that interfere with normal booting Windows 7 and their further correction for normal loading and functioning of the operating system.

During the process, we may be warned that problems have been detected in the boot parameters, click Fix and restart.

System Restore-> using this function we can select a previously created system restore point, if we have it enabled, and roll back to the time when our Windows 7 worked and loaded perfectly, everything is simple here.

Restoring a system image-> I personally use this tool; if used skillfully, it can be replaced paid programs on data backup, if interested, read on.

What's good about it? It will help when you don't have the original Windows 7 installation disc and you've deleted the hidden partition with your laptop's factory settings, but that's not all.

Sometimes there are situations when, due to various reasons or due to the actions of a virus, you will not be able to load the operating system at all, or many people ask How to restore the Windows 7 system, even if the menu with Additional boot options is also unavailable. Should I reinstall the operating system again?

Therefore, immediately after Windows installations 7 on your laptop or computer, we create it using this function -> Restore system image, an archived image of our Windows 7 on the hard drive, we take care of it.

It is imperative to create a Windows 7 Recovery Disk (read below), it will help you use the System Image if the Advanced Boot Options menu does not load.

Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Back up computer data.

Select “Create a system image”.

In my case, Local disk (E:), if you have system unit some hard drives, then of course it is better to place the backup on the hard drive where the operating system is not installed.

By default, the data archiving program will automatically select a partition with the Windows 7 operating system; if you wish, you can add Local disks for archiving, as long as you have enough space.

Note: You may notice that I have two operating systems installed on my laptop, so the archiving program selected two Local disks.

Click Archive and the process of creating an archive with our Windows 7 will begin.

Created, it will look like this.

Now, if necessary, you can deploy the archive with Windows 7 to your computer in 20-30 minutes. It would be better if you additionally copy the archive with the system onto a portable one hard drive, this way you will protect yourself doubly.

Let's imagine that we can't start Windows 7 and deploy the backup we created, let's do it together.

We launch the Windows 7 Recovery Tool by pressing the F-8 button on the keyboard immediately after starting the computer.

The Advanced boot options menu opens, select Troubleshoot your computer.

Restoring a system image

Use latest accessible image systems.

Of course, all our data is on Local disk, where the operating system is now being restored, will be deleted, so you can first boot from any Live CD and copy what you need.

How else can you restore your Windows 7 system? Of course, using the Windows 7 Recovery Disk.

Let's create one that can be used to boot the computer; it will contain recovery tools that can be used to repair Windows 7 boot problems, as well as restore the operating system from the backup copy that we created in advance.

Important: For a recovery disk, the bitness of the system is important, you can use a 32-bit recovery disk for any 32-bit Windows 7, and a 64-bit recovery disk for any 64-bit Windows 7.

Let's go again Archiving computer data.

Create a system recovery disc, insert the DVD into the drive, click “Create disc”.

When Boot Disk Windows 7 recovery will be ready, put it in a safe place.

To restore Windows 7 from a Recovery Disk, you basically don’t need any working operating system at all.

You will only need to change the boot priority to the disk drive in your computer’s BIOS, insert a recovery disk into it and restore your Windows 7 using the archive.

Many here can draw an analogy with data backup programs, and this is correct, they work on the same principle, only their functionality is, of course, more convenient.

Recovering Windows 7 from a Recovery Disk. I show you how to do it. Let's say we're in trouble, we can't start Windows 7, when we press F-8 on the keyboard immediately after starting the computer, nothing happens.

We cannot get into the menu with Additional boot options and an error message is displayed. In this case, the system archive on the hard drive is not available to us. This is exactly the kind of trouble that happened to our reader Ilya, who wrote us a letter asking for help.

In this situation, many people reinstall Windows 7 from scratch, but not you and me, because we have a System Recovery Disk.

We insert it into the drive and reboot, set it to BIOS loading from the drive, as I said, the boot disk starts the System Recovery Options program.

Press Enter until the prompt to boot from the disk disappears.

Automatically, the recovery tool running from the disk will try to recover Windows startup 7.

If nothing works, select any tool, for example, try Restoring a computer using a previously created operating system image.

We use the latest available system image.

What other ways are there to restore Windows 7?

There is another little-known way to restore Windows 7 boot after a failure, and I’ll tell you about it. At first glance, it may seem difficult to many, but nevertheless it often helps me out.

The fact is, friends, that a very large part of the problems due to which you cannot boot Windows 7 lie in registry errors. And Windows 7 would not be Windows 7 if it did not have a mechanism that protects registry files. Such a mechanism exists and creates backup copies of the registry in the RegBack folder every 10 days, regardless of whether you have system recovery enabled or not.

If you cannot solve problems loading Windows 7, you should try replacing the existing (and apparently damaged) registry files from the Config folder archive files from the RegBack folder. To do this, we will have to boot the computer from the Windows 7 installation disk or the Windows 7 recovery disk.

Boot into the recovery environment and select the command line.

We type in it - notepad, we get into Notepad, then File and Open.

We go into the real explorer, click My Computer. Now we need the system drive C:, attention, the drive letters here may be mixed up, but the system drive C: I think you can tell by the system drives inside Windows folders and Program Files.

We go to the folder C:\Windows\System32\Config, here are the active registry files, specify the File Type - All files and see our registry files, we also see the RegBack folder, in which every 10 days the Task Scheduler makes a backup copy of the registry keys.

So, we will replace the current registry files from the Config folder with backup registry files from the RegBack folder.
So, first of all, let’s delete from the C:\Windows\System32\Config folder the files SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, DEFAULT, SYSTEM, which are responsible for all registry hives (my advice is to copy the registry hives somewhere before deleting, just in case).

In their place, copy and paste files with the same names, but from backup copy, that is, from the RegBack folder.

Note: The SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, DEFAULT, SYSTEM files cannot be deleted all together; delete them one by one. Then copy the same files from the RegBack folder in their place.

Friends, if this does not help, apply integrity restoration Windows files 7, if the operating system does not boot, it is done in exactly the same way as in Windows 8.

What else do we have left of Windows 7 recovery tools?

Memory diagnostics 7-> checks system memory for errors. Command line -> using it you can delete files that interfere with loading Windows 7.

I hope our article on how to restore Windows 7 system helped you.

Good day everyone!

When searching and updating drivers, it happens that new driver starts to work unstable: causes conflicts, errors, performs some functions incorrectly, etc.

In this case, it is recommended to roll back to the old previous driver, which previously worked in normal mode. I note that even if you did not make a backup of your drivers (or restore points in Windows), in most cases you can still restore everything (since Windows does not remove the old driver, and it remains in the list of available ones on the PC) .

In this article I will show you with several examples how this can be done.

Addition!

You might find this article useful on how to remove old (or unnecessary) drivers -

1) Via device manager

Option #1

There are two ways to roll back a driver through Device Manager. I like the first one because when you rollback, you can manually select the driver version that you need. I’ll show you with an example how you can restore an old working driver to a video card. So...

First we open device Manager . To do this, go to the control panel, enter “devices” in the search and among the results found there will be a link to the desired manager (see screenshot below).

After which a menu will appear with the choice: produce automatic search or manually on this PC. We choose the second option (see example below).

If you had several versions of drivers on your PC, you should now see a list of them. Be guided by dates, versions and title. By choosing any of the versions, agree to the installation.

All! The screen should blink, and then you will see a message indicating the successful (or unsuccessful) completion of the operation. An example is presented below.

Option No. 2

You can roll back the driver in another way: by finding required device in the manager, open it properties.

In properties, open the "Driver" tab - at the bottom of the window there should be a button "Roll back". I note that it is not always active (even if you recently updated the driver). Therefore, I recommend first trying the first rollback option (described above), and then this one.

Roll back the driver (if the device does not work after updating)

2) Using System Restore

If you have system restore points (and according to Windows default makes them (except for dozens)) , then you can try to roll back to the old driver using system restore.

How to see if there are restore points and run System Restore:

Addition!

3) Using special Driver backup utilities

I couldn’t help but mention this method in this article. True, in order to use it, you need to make a backup in advance (perhaps someone will find this method useful in the future).

The essence of the work is approximately as follows:

Addition!

This post will tell you how to create a backup step by step and subsequently restore drivers from it:

That's all.

Thank you in advance for any additions on the topic.