Windows 10: Extracting hardware drivers from an .exe installer package

Windows 10 Home 21H2 19044.1526, 64-bitHello:I want to update the drivers for my Nvidia graphics card. Nvidia installs a lot of extra stuff that I don't want or need, so I want just the drivers. I followed instructions in a tutorial https://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/30/install-only-the-driver-for-nvidia-graphics-cards/ to update from Device Manager, loading just drivers from files/folders extracted from the .exe driver release package. That is supposed to get just the drivers and not the other apps, tasks, dlls, etc. that running the package's setup.exe would install.However, it didn't work

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HP Drivers won't install

Well the drivers that do actually successfully install extract to this folder. The others don't even extract. I am thinking it's an extraction issue so I will try the 7-zip software like another user suggested. Will keep you guys updated.

 

Relevance of driver installation package files?

As the years went by and you no longer had to manually update video card drivers via adding an .inf file in Windows, driver packages have a self extraction > installation method.

With Nvidia, you extract the files somewhere and then run the setup. I've always gone back after installation, and removed those extracted files.

It hasn't ever seemed to be a problem, yet it got me curious. Are those supposed to stay on your harddisk or are they strictly for the installation only?

 

Extracting drivers from exe that doesn't have cmd extract switch

I would just export the drivers from your reference machine, if that has the same board than machines onto the image will be deployed. It's then an easy task to inject those drivers to deployment image. See tutorial: DISM - Add or Remove Drivers on an Offline Image | Windows 10 Tutorials

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