Windows 10: Ignorant Questions about Device Drivers in Windows 10 Pro

I need to list missing "device drivers" for third-party "recovery environment builder" software ShadowProtect that is designed to produce a bootable recovery-environment CD or USB key for restoring whole-system backups stored on an external USB HD to a new target computer Lenovo P1 Gen 2 running Windows 10 Pro vs. 1909 in the event of catastrophic failure or hard-drive replacement.


I'm running this builder software on the target computer, but the builder itself is a few years old and requires an older version 1607 of the Windows 10 ADK to create the restore process in the Windows PE GUI. The recovery environment that the builder has produced does boot correctly and brings up the WinPE GUI but doesn't run properly because I am told by the manufacturer it's missing some device drivers needed for this relatively new machine.


ShadowProtect has sent me to Microsoft and/or Lenovo for help with this problem, which I don't fully understand.


1 I'm too ignorant about Windows hardware drivers and how they are managed to accomplish this task. Can you point me to the background material that I need to understand the specific problem?



2 Points below is PURE SPECULATION on my part. Can you please confirm or deny these GUESSES?



a In order for a "device driver" apparently often one or more SYS files, perhaps including DLLs and maybe EXEs, judging from Device Manger/XXXDevice/Properties/Driver/Details to be picked up and installed from an INF file entered into the builder's "Additional RE Drivers" box if that's really what the builder wants?!, that driver must already be installed on the target computer.



b Since the target computer appears to run the GUI version of ShadowProtect under Windows 10, not from the recovery environment just fine, it must already have the needed drivers installed into Windows.



c Therefore the task must reduce to finding and entering paths to the INF files that are ALREADY ON THE MACHINE, or at least the "relevant" ones.



d Therefore, search the target machine for *.INF files in the C:/ drive the drivers may appear in various sub-directories TBD, weed out any not obviously relevant to hardware drivers, and add their paths to the recovery environment builder's "Additional RE Drivers" box.



e No reference to Lenovo's Drivers and Software database should be required UNLESS the relevant drivers have somehow been installed on the target machine by some other means disk image? without local use of their INF files. That case would seem more difficult, and I don't know how to accomplish it without RE-INSTALLING such drivers with installers from Lenovo's Web site and then HOPING to find the INF files this time around.



Any guidance on how to accomplish this task whether or not my guesses are correct would be most appreciated. I'm far from a newbie on Windows but have never really understood the whole device-driver issue. -- JCW2

:)

 

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