How to Inject a New Driver after Dissimilar Hardware Restore (4033519)

This article serves as a “How-To” guide that details the steps necessary to inject a new driver for restoring or migrating agents from their original hardware to dissimilar hardware (for example, moving from HP to Dell, BMR, P2V, and so on).

When Rapid Recovery takes backups of a machine, the backups contain a full system image up to the point to which you want to restore. This includes all system drivers that are used for Windows to boot, given the hardware the system is on. If you are completing a restore to hardware dissimilar from when the original backup was taken, drivers (primarily the disk controller) must be injected into the restored operating system (OS) before Windows can start.

NOTE: If you are restoring a backup to the original machine the backup was taken from, then you do not need to inject drivers after the restore.

After performing a restore to dissimilar hardware, it is necessary to inject the new disk controller driver into the restored OS before Windows can boot successfully. Follow these steps to inject the driver via the Universal Recovery Console (URC):

1. Download the correct disk controller drivers from the manufacturer’s website.
   • Make sure to get the correct driver for the OS you restored and the architecture of the OS (x86 or x64).
   • If this driver comes zipped, or as an executable, extract the file to a folder so that it can be accessed.
   • You should either place these files on an external media that can be plugged into the restored machine, or on a network location that can be reached by the restored machine (URC).
2. Go to the URC window and select “Driver Injection.”
3. Click “Browse” and point to the Windows installation you just restored.
   • C:\Windows
   • Sometimes with machines that have an SRP partition (system reserved), this will take the C: and the system volume will be on “D:”. This is acceptable for the driver injection.
   • Click “OK” once you have found the Windows folder.
   • Verify at the bottom of the window that the URC has detected the correct version of Windows that was restored.
4. Select “Add Driver.” Point to the location of the driver (.inf file).
   • If the driver is located on an external drive, this will show up as a drive letter in the URC.
   • If the driver is on a network location, make sure you have mapped a drive to this location.
5. After the driver has injected you will see the “driver injector log.” Click “OK” once this is completed.
6. After injecting the driver, select “Repair Boot Problems.”
7. When boot repair is done you will see a status at the bottom of the window. Click “OK.”
8. On the main screen of the URC, click “Reboot” and Windows will boot up.
   • Verify that you have removed the boot CD media, or set the machine to boot from the hard disk.

Additional Information

You may find the following articles useful when injecting a new driver.

1. “Boot Error: Bootmgr is Missing ”