How to Backup Printer Drivers and Restore Them on Another Computer

Back Up Printer Drivers -Printer IconBack when I had a forum on this site someone posted a utility that allows you to back up printer drivers on one computer and restore them on another.  This utility has saved me countless amounts of time, especially when setting up new computers.  And since I don’t have the forum anymore, I felt like I needed to re-share it.  So in the following article I would like to show you how to how to copy printer driver from one computer to another using this great tool.

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Now, on with using Print Migrator to export printer driver from one computer to another.

I understand this utility from Microsoft will allow users to backup printer drivers up to Windows 10.

Step 1: Download the Print Migrator Software Utility

The first step is to download the Microsoft Print Migrator utility.  This utility was actually designed to backup printers on print servers but also works on desktops.  It’s also a stand-alone app so it can be ran from anywhere including your flash drive.

Microsoft Print Migrator Screenshot

You’ll see the printer migrator progress data during run-time shown in the bottom window.

Step 2: Run and Select Backup

Once you open the Print Migrator, click on the “File” menu and select “Backup.”  You will now choose a name and a location where you will backup your printers to. Click the “Open” button to begin the backup.

 

Print Migrator Screenshot

Once the printers are done backing up, you will see a message in the bottom window that says “Backup Complete.”

Step 3: Transfer Printer Driver Backup and Migrator to Other Computer

Now you are ready to restore the printers on another computer.

Print Migrator Screenshot

To restore them, just transfer the backup file and the Print Migrator utility to the other computer and open the Print Migrator.

Step 4: Restore Printer Driver Backup on Another Computer

Then click the “File” menu and select “Restore.”  Select the backup file that you created and click “Open.”

 

Print Migrator Screenshot-tree view

How to copy printer driver from one computer to another, now completed.

Once the printers have been restored you will see a message at the bottom that says “Restore Complete.”

You are now ready to use your printers copied from one computer to the other computer.

Summary of How to Back up Printer Drivers and Restore them on Another Computer

So you see how you can use the Ol’ MS Print Migrator software program to perform the backup and restore printer drivers from one computer to another computer. Not mentioned above is that it might only be required under certain circumstances these days. Thanks again to the user TheKoz who originally shared this utility.

About The Author

Casey

Casey (Surname withheld for contractual reasons) successfully started his own IT consultancy well over 10 years ago. He started training and mentoring other computer technicians who want to create a part time or full time income as an IT consultant. See the 'About Us' for more.

31 Comments

  • jeroen

    Reply Reply November 3, 2009

    super, works , its simple, cant get any better. thank you so much…

  • binh

    Reply Reply November 6, 2009

    This is a good tool. It seems like it carried all of the drivers to the other computer. When I plug in the printer, I see the “Add Hardware Wizard” window comes up. So i just click Next to let windows install it but it cannot find the drivers. I looked under Device Manager and it has a section called “Other Devices” and under that “Hewlett Packard. But I was able to communicate with the printer and print a test page. Do you know how to fix the Add Hardware Wizard from popping up?

    • Casey

      Reply Reply November 9, 2009

      Hi Binh,

      I’ve never run into that problem when using this utility before. Does the printer have a card reader? If so, that’s probably why you are being prompted because this utility won’t copy over that driver. You would have to go to HP’s website and download the full driver to fix it.

      • Binh

        Reply Reply November 9, 2009

        Hi Casey

        I have a HP Deskjet 3820 which does not have a card reader. Looking at the properties of the “Hewlett Packard” under “Other Devices” in Device Manager it says something like “on HP USB Printing Support” or something similar to it. This is also doing it to other standard printers as well. No extra features on the printers, just printing.

        TIA

        • Casey

          Reply Reply November 9, 2009

          Okay, try downloading the drivers from HP’s website and see if that fixes the problem. There must have been something with the USB support that it couldn’t copy over for some reason. Let me know what happens.

        • Binh

          Reply Reply November 10, 2009

          Downloading and installing the drivers for the HP printers worked. This fix is fine if i were trying to migrate just 1 printer but i’m working on a project that is re-imaging all their computers in the company (3000 PCs) where there are many different printer models and manufacture. So this would be a pain to try to re-install all the drivers again. Do you know what could migrate this particular USB printing driver support?

        • Casey

          Reply Reply November 10, 2009

          Hi Binh,

          Unfortunately, I don’t know why it’s doing this. Like I said, I’ve never run into this problem before as long as I have been using this utility. Hopefully this will work on the rest of your drivers and save you the trouble from at least having to reinstall all the others.

    • Will

      Reply Reply May 25, 2010

      This works great for the printers, which won’t show up on a normal driver backup utility like WinDriversBackup.

      Use the above in tandem and you should be able to restore everything, though if you are re-imaging that many computers I’d hope you would have better imaging solutions.

  • Binh

    Reply Reply November 9, 2009

    Hi Casey

    I have a HP Deskjet 3820 which does not have a card reader. Looking at the properties of the “Hewlett Packard” under “Other Devices” in Device Manager it says something like “on HP USB Printing Support” or something similar to it. This is also doing it to other standard printers as well. No extra features on the printers, just printing.

    TIA

  • Alejandro

    Reply Reply March 14, 2010

    Windows 7 no trae el controlador de la impresora Epson FX 1170, lo hice con esta aplicacion y funciona perfecto

  • FYI

    Reply Reply August 1, 2010

    The link to get to the Printer Migrator’s webpage has changed slightly (the version without the ?info=EXLINK bit at the end redirects to an irrelevant page now): http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2003/techinfo/overview/printmigrator3.1.mspx?info=EXLINK

    • Casey

      Reply Reply August 10, 2010

      Thanks! I updated the link.

  • quannicolas

    Reply Reply April 27, 2011

    thanks a lot, it’s awesome. Very useful for my work.

  • Raymond Elixer

    Reply Reply October 30, 2011

    Thanks I was having such hassles getting window 7 drivers for my HP Desk Jet 930c – HP sent me to Windows Update and windows update sent me to HP. I had it working on my one computer. So your suggestion worked perfectly. Thanks again.

  • Reinaldo

    Reply Reply December 7, 2011

    Thanks a lot!

    Saved my day!

  • Medway Times

    Reply Reply December 28, 2011

    superb, mate 🙂

    saved me loads of work – had to transfer settings for 3 network printers and this tool is really sweet for that.

    thank you for the advice, Helmuts

  • jaemy

    Reply Reply January 17, 2012

    와 님아 감사여. 나도 똑같은 문제로 윈7에서 드라이버 백업하려고 찾아봣는데 구글링으로 드뎌 찾았네염. 님 짱드삼. 이거 정말 물건이네여.
    감솹니다. 나는 한쿸인이라 영어를 못해여. 구글번역기를 함 돌려서 읽어보세여.

  • Sam

    Reply Reply January 31, 2012

    It looks like a nice utility, but I could not get it to resore to another workstation. I backed up on one workstation which had 28 network printers, but I could never get it to resore on another workstation. It looked like it was loading everything into the restore workstation, but it didn’t.

    • Lance Manley

      Reply Reply August 31, 2015

      Same thing here. I have a network with about 7 printers. I backed up from one windows 7 machine, restored on another. It looks like it’s working, but doesn’t actually do anything.

  • Prince

    Reply Reply April 2, 2013

    thanks 🙂

  • Marat_N

    Reply Reply May 22, 2013

    Thanks a lot, Casey !
    Your article was the only with working download link for that tool!
    I couldn’t find it on any Microsoft websites as it became deprecated.
    Print Migrator helped me very much!
    Thanks!

    • Casey

      Reply Reply May 23, 2013

      Awesome! Glad I could help.

  • Karl Davies

    Reply Reply May 31, 2013

    This is brilliant! Saved me soooooooooo much time!! Thank you 🙂

  • Varga Krisztián

    Reply Reply November 27, 2013

    Dear Casey,

    How can I export printer settings (name, share name, location, comment fields) without any driver settings? And later restore them?
    I can assign the driver later to the printers.
    Thank you in advance!

  • shahar

    Reply Reply January 7, 2015

    does it work if i want to copy the driver from computer with win7 to computer with win8?

  • Sandy

    Reply Reply May 12, 2015

    You saved my day! Thank you

  • Shashi

    Reply Reply July 15, 2015

    This is wonderful tool and it has saved my lots time and work in print server migration. Thanks you very much and appreciated your tool and efforts.

  • Joel

    Reply Reply October 21, 2016

    Won’t even do a backup for me. Program wants to know where to look for the file, almost as if it was trying to do the restore. Yes, I selected the “backup” option in the “Actions” menu.

  • Thomas

    Reply Reply November 14, 2017

    Hi,

    how can I migrate only a particular printer or few of them?
    I suppose the tool will grab all of the available printers at the same time?

    Thomas

    • Jeff

      Reply Reply December 4, 2017

      I haven’t tried to only migrate one or a few of them. I can say there is the menu system (visible in screenshots above) and if you click on the cross of the menu tree, you can expand it and perhaps you can select one or more once expanded, before you click to back up printer drivers. Otherwise you might have to remove the ones you do not want after the migration (less preferred in your case I guess).

  • Alex

    Reply Reply December 7, 2017

    After an epic battle with Print Spooler on Windows 7 the printer driver for a Xerox MFP refused to install no matter what I did-an error message window showed up and all install attempts failed. No registry cleanup, removal of partial driver install and reinstall or Print Spooler reset was successful. I was about to contact Xerox support for some help with this well known Print Spooler lockup error on Windows 7 (I fail to remember the error code now but I saw online it is a very frequent problem). Then I found this nice page here and simply followed your advice-I installed the driver on another Windows 7 machine, I backed it up and then I restored it on the problematic Windows 7 install. All went well and the Print Spooler lockup was avoided in a very clever way. The driver works perfectly so far and I installed the remaining control and scanner software with no problems. Great trick that solved it all after so much trouble with Print Spooler. Thanks a lot Casey!

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