Pulling drivers from working computer prior to new HD?

[Loose rivets]

With respect to my other unanswered thread, :uhoh: , in desperation, I called the local guru. (Oh, the shame, but he's got 30 years experience and just about everyone in this area speaks well of him.) He was dismissive of Belarc, inasmuch that he said, if the label has Sony on it, use that key, not some . . . etc.

I have to say I found Belarc charming to deal with and I'd be surprised to find the key it sees is wrong - but is there a similar utility that might give a consensus?

He, the Guru, happened to say he'd got software that would pull the drivers from my laptop - while it was fully functional.

Since Sony Vaio is notorious for being a pain with getting drivers, I thought this to be a nifty thing to do. Anyone got experience with doing this?

[Geordie_Expat]

I don't understand the criticism of Belarc. After all, it draws the info off the machine, it doesn't make it up !! Always someone who will rubbish something for no apparent reason. Personally, I think it pretty clever.

[Loose rivets]

No, nor do I. I had a one-to-one conversation about Asus' reluctance (downright refusal) to reveal the key to the OS in their top-end laptop. W8, originally. I took him to say words to the effect, we haven't cracked it yet, but we will.

Today, I downloaded DriverMax having seen the menu structure on How-To Geek. Nothing like the article. Not even remotely. It did claim to check on the drivers but my hope of testing the utility on an old Vaio just resulted in the touch pad going crazy in the newly installed W10. I may have to totally re-install that, as the drivers are reported to all be fine. No major issue, as it was just an old laptop devoted to learning about 10, however, I wish some of this learning could be a bit more positive.

[Avtrician]

To the best of my knowledge, drivers need to be installed, you cant just copy them to a new machine.

I just ran Belarc on my new asus laptop, and it found the W7 Pro licence and key with no worries. These values are written to the registry, so Belarc knows where to find them.

[The Flying Pram]

Dunno if this helps?

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc730875.aspxTFP

[Loose rivets]

Avtrician Does your computer have just a small Windows label without the key?

I have a vague recollection of someone thinking the Key might be in the Registry. But that's strange if so, as I thought the registry was just part of the OS, and that's the very thing that might be lost if away from base - even if one carried a replacement HD. * Yes, one could be prepared if clued up about the problem in advance.

It was also suggested it might be in firmware, but no one would let on. At that point in time Belarc could not see the key. (Conversation with horse's mouth'.) I heard a rumour that Dell was permitting the Key to be known as customers had complained. Not confirmed.

*One of the things I learned while trying to create the ISO is that it's permissible to carry a spare ISO on a Stick/DVD. Just one. MS rules. So one could do a HD change 'down the route'. However, MS knew just how many Office seats of my 3 had been used, so it is possible one would have to have seats available to be sure of Big Brother not being unpleasant.

TFP, I've seen several explanations that almost seem to do the job, but frankly most are above my head - or at least, I can't devote that learning time to the issue. It's a slow process these days.:uhoh: However, this what I'd hoped to find:


http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/system-administration/copy-windows-drivers-from-one-machine-to-another/

When I ran it, it was NOTHING like that. The above was exactly what I wanted, though I was not sure if they would migrate to a different OS. The above seems to say it will sometimes.




.

[Avtrician]

Yes, my laptop only has the little sticker, no key. There is a recovery partition on the hardrive somewhere, I may even have the disks cant remember.

W7 is still installed to the harddrive, so all of the licensing stuff goes to the registry or else it wouldnt work.

[Loose rivets]

W7 is still installed to the harddrive,

That surprises me. That is, no Sticker key in the W7 era. I'd not heard of it until W8-ish. I supposed it was all to do with the manufacturer.

I became suspicious that the key thing was getting expensive to do in mass numbers - tying a number to an installation and then the label print. I wondered if they just pumped out the key with the OEM mentioned in it, and they were the same but some clever trick stopped a master Windows file being stolen.


Best Buy in Texas wanted $170 for overcoming the problem. It seems they could do it even if the HD had failed. Since the owner never knew the key, they'd be unaware of a change if there was one. However, now you say Belarc can see the key, it would be possible to know if they'd changed it.

The only reason I'd like to know now is that I'd spent so much time probing and I don't like not getting answers.

Happening more and more these days. :uhoh:

[le Pingouin]

The BIOS/firmware carries a manufacturers key - use the right OEM installation DVD and no additional key is required as it's sourced from the BIOS/firmware. Forms of this have been around since WInXP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Locked_Pre-installation

[Loose rivets]

That was interesting!


With SLP 3.0, OEM SLP keys are no longer used at all. Instead, a tool is used by the OEM to embed a unique key each computer's BIOS, making consumer versions of Windows 8 and later very difficult to pirate.

Yes, that seems to tally with what I thought (especially about the BIOS ) but I didn't know about the XP era. I'd sold my company by then - up to then, selling CAD workstations was like having a machine that printed money. 9k for a big plotter, 2,600 for a 21" monitor, and a grand extra for an Imprimis Wren 150mb drive upgrade.

And there was me telling people not to get windows - having loads of toys taking up valuable memory space would never catch on.

A bit of history about the early era: The Cambridge Computer Graphics double slot card sold at 9 grand. I took one to Texas to show manufacturers there to see if they could make them under licence. When they ran it on test the room fell quiet - they knew it was in a different league. When the boss was called, he wasn't surprised. He's started his company after visiting the UK and seeing an earlier card at a show in Brighton.

Shortly after, it was all over. AutoDesk rewrote AutoCAD in such a way that it could not make use of the ASIC chip which had been the big investment.