Installing just driver

When I need to install the driver for a typical printer these days, I am forced to use the installation program from the CD or one that I download from the manufacture's website. Unfortunately, along with the driver comes all this excess stuff that clogs up my hard drive and system resources. How can extract just the barebone drivers from the cab or whatever archives that the drivers are imprison in from the CD?

 

Have you tried to go into device manager,right click on the device, select update driver and follow the instructions

 

Yes, the problem here is the drivers are held captive in some cab-like file which I assume are proprietary, and as such, only the installation setup.exe on the CD can open it. Actually a workaround solution I have is to install the printer on my laptop temporarily using the CD, then share the printer over the network. This would enable the "real" computer to import just the drivers. Then I uninstall the whole collection of junk from the laptop. What a hassle, but it works.

 

can you browse the cd and find the drivers? if so ether copy them to your desktop and when you update your drivers in device manager point the computer to look on your desktop for the drivers or leave them on the cd and point your computer to look in the drive that has the cd with them on it and tell it the whole path to get to them (like my cd/rw is the g drive) so I would have in the window (G:/ software/install/files/ cab/ drivers) (thats not the path you need but I dont have your cd to look at!) you need to point the computer all the way to the right files Im not the best explainer, so hope this helps