Offline - Drivers or Device Manager View

[WindowsStar]

Hello fellow forum readers.

I have a question, I had another tech pull a hard drive out of a computer that is overseas and send it to me for re-load (long story as to why). I was wondering if anyone knows of software like the device manager that will let me view the devices that are installed on this hard drive while connected to another machine.

Currently I have the drive that was shipped to me connected to my machine via a USB connector. I see the drive and wanted an easy way to see what drivers were loaded on the drive before I re-load it.

Thanks.

 

[pebbly]

Hello fellow forum readers.

I have a question, I had another tech pull a hard drive out of a computer that is overseas and send it to me for re-load (long story as to why). I was wondering if anyone knows of software like the device manager that will let me view the devices that are installed on this hard drive while connected to another machine.

Currently I have the drive that was shipped to me connected to my machine via a USB connector. I see the drive and wanted an easy way to see what drivers were loaded on the drive before I re-load it.

Thanks.

just a guess here WindowsStar ,couldn't you run a 3rd party app like driver genius on it and let it find the drivers for you

 

[WindowsStar]

Great Idea: However, Pebbly, wouldn't that look at my machine? I want to see the drivers loaded on the hard drive attached to my machine. I haven't used driver genius before; does it have an option to point it to another windows load?

 

[severedsolo]

Hi WindowsStar. Can't you look in the hard drive at C:\Windows\System32 and WOW64? I know its a big old list, but it might give you an idea.

 

[WindowsStar]

Hi WindowsStar. Can't you look in the hard drive at C:\Windows\System32 and WOW64? I know its a big old list, but it might give you an idea.

I have looked there but you need to weed through everything. I what I would like is an Offline Device Manager so I can point it to the hard drive, the software look at the drivers and the registry then tell you what is loaded as if the drive was in the original machine and booted up. Then I will know what I am facing before I do anything. Looking at the directory means a lot of work figuring out what is what.

 

[severedsolo]

I've just had another Idea.... How about loading the HDD into a VM and booting like that? That will give you access to the Device Manager at least.

 

[Kari]

I think you have no other choice than what Severedsolo suggested. Slow and tedious method but you'll find most of the drivers, selecting Properties from the context menu shows what driver you are looking at.

 

[WindowsStar]

I've just had another Idea.... How about loading the HDD into a VM and booting like that? That will give you access to the Device Manager at least.

There you go....I had not had that idea. Now how can I do that without changing anything on the drive? Which way would be the best way to go about that, VMWare??

 

[severedsolo]

I've just had another Idea.... How about loading the HDD into a VM and booting like that? That will give you access to the Device Manager at least.

There you go....I had not had that idea. Now how can I do that without changing anything on the drive? Which way would be the best way to go about that, VMWare??

To be honest I have no idea how to do it. Give me a bit, I'll have a play around and see what I can do.

 

[Kari]

You could try Disk2vhd, to make a vhd from that disk. Then it's easy to mount it to Virtual PC, or if the image is above VPC's maximum vhd size 127 GB, to VirtualBox or VMWare.

One problem that I can think of here is that when mounting that as a boot device on a virtual machine, some of the devices are changed to emulated virtual devices.

Kari

 

[WindowsStar]

You could try Disk2vhd, to make a vhd from that disk. Then it's easy to mount it to Virtual PC, or if the image is above VPC's maximum vhd size 127 GB, to VirtualBox or VMWare.

One problem that I can think of here is that when mounting that as a boot device on a virtual machine, some of the devices are changed to emulated virtual devices.

Kari

80gig drive and it is not full. Now we are getting somewhere.

 

[severedsolo]

You could try Disk2vhd, to make a vhd from that disk. Then it's easy to mount it to Virtual PC, or if the image is above VPC's maximum vhd size 127 GB, to VirtualBox or VMWare.

One problem that I can think of here is that when mounting that as a boot device on a virtual machine, some of the devices are changed to emulated virtual devices.

Kari

80gig drive and it is not full. Now we are getting somewhere.

Looking at Disk2VHD now. It looks like you will have to make a VHD of the System Reserved partition too, otherwise it won't boot (I would guess)

 

[Kari]

I most definitely think it's worth a shot.

 

[WindowsStar]

Ok, I am making a backup image of the drive, just in case before I do anything. I am hopeful that this will work.

@severedsolo, if your testing comes up with anything let me know.

 

[severedsolo]

DAMN! Well it successfully made the VHD. I also managed to get it into a VM, I made a VHD of my System Reserved partition and my C:\ Partition. But I can't boot it in a VM because I don't have Hardware Virtualization. so Virtual PC will only boot 32 bit OS's

you dont have your CPU listed in your system specs, so I can't say if you have Hyper-V (or whatever its called) or not, your mileage may vary. Also it obviously depends whether its 64 bit windows your booting.

 

[Kari]

WindowsStar, if it is an X64 system, both VirtualBox and VMWare can run x64 guests.

 

[WindowsStar]

DAMN! Well it successfully made the VHD. I also managed to get it into a VM, I made a VHD of my System Reserved partition and my C:\ Partition. But I can't boot it in a VM because I don't have Hardware Virtualization. so Virtual PC will only boot 32 bit OS's

you dont have your CPU listed in your system specs, so I can't say if you have Hyper-V (or whatever its called) or not, your mileage may vary. Also it obviously depends whether its 64 bit windows your booting.

Thanks for the extra work. I will not be using my PC for this I am using a PC on the bench. I will make sure I am using one with VM hardware. I have a Dell 780 on the bench it is only 7 weeks old, it should work.

Windows 7 64bit is the off-line hard drive. I will be using Windows 7 64bit as the running machine on a Dell 780.

 

[severedsolo]

I see no reason why it won't work then Not really extra work, I was curious about whether it would work as well Let me know how you get on.

 

[WindowsStar]

I like these puzzles; this is why I got into computers in the first place. When I have a new challenge like this I am so happy just like a kid with a new toy.

 

[Kari]

Windows 7 64bit is the off-line hard drive. I will be using Windows 7 64bit as the running machine on a Dell 780.

I think that the free VMWare player can not run x64 hosts, for that you'll need VMWare Server, so install the latest Oracle VirtualBox and mount it there. VirtualBox can use vhd format, it doesn't have to be VirtualBox's own vdi format.

VirtualBox