I have a quit old PC that was running Windows 2000 but the system crashed some days ago. Now I need to know which drivers have been installed on that specific pc but the system isn’t booting anymore and the rescue and recovery options failed.
Now I need to know which drivers have been installed on that system because there is an external device attached which contains four different components that require specific drivers. The manifacturer of that device does not exist anymore and there is also no documentation of that device left.
So is there any possibility to extract a list of drivers that have been installed on that system using a linux live cd?
Answer
Absolutely, if the drive still works, you can boot it with a linux live CD, and mount the drive (there are many guides online on how to do so, for example – https://superuser.com/questions/352157/mount-ntfs-windows-partition-on-ubuntu-live-cd).
Then to extract the list of drivers there are also several options:
- Go over the drivers directory in the mounted drive (
C:\Windows\System32\drivers,C:\Windows\DriverStore). - Explore the HKLM registry hive using existing tools (RegRipper, Registry Explorer, etc.) in order to view the keys under this path
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services, which lists all the installed drivers.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : davidb , Answer Author : chicks
