Getting drivers and their programs from a Windows 7 recovery USB

I have an ASUS Laptop that came with an incorrectly installed recovery partition. After a lot of hassle, I ended up buying new recovery media from the third party ASUS recommended – which was also flawed (install looks as if it is running well until the screen flashes in huge, screen filling red caps ERROR and reimaging fails). ASUS has informed me that, although the USB recovery media is the only thing they can offer, it’s failure to function isn’t their problem. Product is out of warranty, there is only one company to buy the recovery media from (the same company that imaged it incorrectly to begin with) and the ASUS website does not have all the drivers/programs available.

So I have purchased a new copy of Windows 7 OEM and installed it. I am now trying to extract the drivers and driver programs from the USB. I know it can be done and that the USB media is intact enough for me to extract most, if not all of it. So far I have managed to open the driver location (.wim file) using 7zip and have installed them (from folder DriverStore\FileRepository) using dpinst.exe and a batch file. However, the drivers don’t seem to be actually doing anything and I am having difficulty finding the actual programs for the drivers (such as the program which will make all the FN keys work). I have checked the laptop’s system files (System32) and the driver files are there.

I started by following these two guides:

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/how-can-i-extract-drivers-from-a-windows-7-recovery-disc/

https://forum.raymond.cc/threads/how-to-extract-drivers-from-vista-dvd-for-windows-7.15176/

but most of the .inf files under the en-US folder would not install through the device manager and the ones that supposedly did had no effect (in fact, it lets me install a driver for the CPU as many times as I want).

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope you can help!

Answer

I was able to install the drivers after I spoke with a gentleman the other day who reminded me that I had “Show hidden files and folders” off.

I am posting instructions here for anyone else who stumbles upon this post with the same problem (This works for my ASUS recovery USB - other brands may or may not structure their USBs similarly):

1. Open "Folder Options" (type "Folder Options" in start search or "hidden" in start and click "Show hidden files and folders") select the "View" tab and toggle: Show "Hidden files and folders"


2. Check your hidden folders – I had 3. You are looking for a file called Driver64.wim . For me, it was in located at E:\K73SD_WIN7_64


3. Extract file Driver64.wim with 7zip (or any other program that can handle .wim files).


4. For me, the drivers I wanted were in E:\K73SD_WIN7_64\Driver64.wim\Software\ - they had their installers, so I ended up not needed any custom batch files or code. Just click and install what you want like any program.

Enjoy!