Do additionally installed drivers survive Windows 11 "Reset this PC"?

blami

Dec 1

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I have laptop in which I swapped SSD for aftermarket one and don't have access to the recovery media/image. Some drivers needed for laptop to function properly need to be installed from vendor's website. I'd like to sell this laptop and give buyer usual Windows 11 first-boot experience.

If I do clean Windows 11 install with local or (my) Microsoft account, install drivers from the website and then "Reset this PC" will installed drivers survive?

EDIT: This is one-off thing, I know I can extract those drivers and bake them in install media but I feel doing it as I described above is less effort in my situation.

1 answer

Accepted answer · original discussion

LPChip

Dec 1

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No, "Reset this PC" will delete everything, including drivers.

If the drivers are not in Windows 11 via Windows Update, then the next buyer will have to install the drivers themselves.

Does this mean you can't do anything about it? No, absolutely not, there are ways. Here's what you need to do:

Reset the PC

Reset the PC like you normally would.

After the reboot, you get the setup wizard. Do this normally as if this is your own PC. Although you probably will want to use something like User and no password.

Configure anything you want for the new owner

Run Windows updates, install drivers and remove bloat etc, that you want to be ready for the next owner. This step is basically what a manufacturer would do too before shipping it to you.

Run sysprep to trigger an OOBE

Now that the laptop is ready, we want to create the "Out of Box Experience" (or OOBE for short).

We can do this by running a Command prompt as administrator, then navigate to C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep

This will popup a small window asking you how to sysprep. Change the 2nd option from reboot to shutdown and hit OK.

The system will now shutdown.

Get the PC to the buyer

You have done everything now as if the PC is bought fresh. When the new buyer starts the PC, it will boot them into the Out of Box Experience, and they get asked for certain settings and their username and password. Once they login, all the drivers you already installed will be there.

One final note

Note that if you want to pre-install software, make sure you install the software for All Users, and not for your own user. Your user will be gone after the OOBE has been run.