Drivermax

[#1]

I want to back up all the drivers on a computer prior to reinstall of Windows (don't have the utility disk with them on).
Have checked Download.com and they have a free download of Drivermax which according to the blurb does the job.
Has anyone used this or alternatively, is there a better choice?
Thank you.

[#2]

It's really just the drivers that are associated with your motherboard that you need, and your graphics card if you have a separate one.  The chances are that some of these will be out of date anyway so if you can identify your motherboard it might be better to download the latest drivers from the manufacturer's web site.  Anything else, printers and the like will have software associated with them and hopefully you still have the installation disks.  Or again, download the latest version from the manufacturer's web site.  If you just blindly try to copy the old drivers you risk repeating any errors that your computer has at present and defeating the object of reinstalling Windows.

[#3]

It is a good idea to prepare well for a reinstall and, from your question, you have not done this before. Yes, you need to establish what motherboard you have and download the required drivers from the maker's website (if you have a Dell you will be there a long time) If you have an Intel board that also could be a problem. One way to try is go to the Crucial website and ask it to find out what memory you would need for an upgrade; Crucial will check your machine and might tell you what motherboard you have in it. Write it down. If you bought the machine ready built you may have a driver CD with it; sort out the CDs that came with it. Preparation is nine tenths of the job. Make a complete backup on an external drive - that way you won't lose anything. Give yourself plenty of time; it takes me three days to get back to a machine I am used to. I have used a program like DriveMax to look for driver files but never used them as the real driver install files are much better.

[#4]

Thank you for helping. Have done reinstalls before but they have mostly been restore ones with the manufacturers OEM disk or recovery partition.
The times that I have done the full proper reinstalls/reformat I have always had the motherboard disk.
This one is the latter - full copy of W7 so that is why I asked.  Should be OK now so thanks for advice.