Windows 10: How to export Windows drivers using DISM

Did you know that you can use the built-in tool DISM on Windows machines to export drivers?

Windows comes with a set of drivers to make sure that most hardware devices work out of the box. Manufacturers create drivers for their devices that users may install; these may add support for functionality or may be required to get a device working at all on a Windows PC.

If you plan to migrate to a new Windows PC or to set up the current one from scratch, you may be interested in having these custom installed drivers at hand to install them.

Tip: you may list all installed third-party Windows drivers using the free tool DriverView. Nir Sofer has another tool, InstalledDriversList, which you may use as well. There is also Driver Store Explorer that you may use.

How to export drivers using DISM




With DISM, it takes one command to export drivers on the current Windows system. Here is how that is done.

1. Open Start.
2. Type cmd.exe.
3. Select Run as administrator.
4. Run the command dism /online /export-driver /destination:<path>
   • replace <path> with the path that you want the exported drivers to be saved to, e.g. c:\users\martin\downloads\driver-export\
   • Note that the folder needs to exist, you get an error otherwise and no export.

The command exports all third-party drivers to the destination folder. Note that you may also use it to export drivers from an offline image using the following command (run from an elevated PowerShell prompt)

Export-WindowsDriver -Path c:\offline-image -Destination d:\drivers
​

Check out Microsoft's Docs website for a full list of available parameters.

The process may take a moment to complete. A test on a Surface Go device resulted in 101 exported drivers. The process took several minutes to complete.

The exported drivers are placed in the specified folder. Each driver is put in a separate folder.



Recognition may be difficult, as folder names may not reveal much about the driver. You may open the .inf file in a folder in a plain text editor to look up additional information.

Import the exported drivers


Importing can be done for individual drivers or, by using a special command, for all drivers.

You may right-click on an .inf file to install the driver. Another option that you have is to open the Windows Device Manager to use the update driver button. Using it, you get an option to pick a driver from the local system. Just pick the exported driver and wait for the process to complete.

A recursive import of all exported drivers requires the tool pnputil.exe. Run the following command in an elevated command prompt window:

pnputil.exe /add-driver <path>\*.inf /subdirs /install

Replace <path> with the full path of the exported drivers folder.

Closing Words

It takes a single command to export all third-party drivers on Windows systems. Using it before setting up a system anew or migrating to a new system may help users who don't have access to certain driver installations anymore. (via Born)

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DISM - Add or Remove Drivers on an Offline Image


Ah I thought you might be doing the DISM/drivers one.

It is good info and I use parts of this frequently when I'm reinstalling on my old hardware and need to manually add drivers.

I would suggest DISM /Get-Drivers as an alternate to the Powershell step in 2.2 - the table format is quite useful I find.

One method of applying the drivers I tried which seems to work (not sure how valid it is) when clean-installing a machine as a one-off:

1. Export drivers as per Step 2
2. Use DISM /Get-Drivers to show which driver is which, and copy only the ones I know are problematic to a subfolder, and add this subfolder to a bootable Windows 10 Setup USB
3. Boot Windows 10 Setup from the USB
4. Open a command prompt with Shift F10, type command 'wpeutil shutdown' but don't press enter. Instead, Alt-Tab back to Setup
5. Follow the normal clean install process, delete partitions and let it install the relevant edition
6. When it says Restarting in a few seconds, quickly Alt-Tab to the command prompt and press enter, to stop it restarting but shut down instead
7. Boot again from the USB, go straight into Shift-F10, and use DISM /add-driver to add relevant drivers to the offline Windows drive as per Step 4
8. wpeutil shutdown again, and let it restart this time, so that Windows boots and finishes configuring itself with the new drivers available to it.

I found it easier than Mounting the image and also means I don't change the .WIM so I can use that on other hardware without fear of non-standard (and probably quite old) drivers getting in the way .

Although in some cases I could install and change it once Windows is up and running , one of 1709's default drivers causes a BSOD during installation itself, if I don't add the alternative manually using the above technique before it gets to that point.

But it's not a technique I've seen anywhere else so I'm probably bending the rules somewhere. *Wink

 

Unlocked Realtek HD Audio Drivers Windows 7 & 8 (With Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive)

DTS supported natively by Windows 8/8.1 and it should work on windows 10 too just DDL require to unlock your driver .

 

Source to use for DISM on Windows 10

This is not completely true. The suggestion is to download the Techbench version and use DISM to apply to install.wim directly. However, you can also use the version download from MCT except it will involve an extra step as follows:

1. Use the latest version of 7-Zip to extract the content of install.esd. For example: to a folder xxx on the desktop
2. From Admin command prompt:
   Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\xxx\windows /LimitAccess

See screen shot, the contents of install.wim and install.esd are exactly the same.