Extract a Driver From an Installer Without Running It
A short, friendly walkthrough of getting the Inf, Cat, and Sys files out of a maker installer for offline use.
Why You Might Want To
Maker installers do a lot — install the driver, register utilities, lay down icons, set start menu entries. Sometimes you only want the driver itself: for a clean install, for use on another machine, or for an offline system that cannot run the full installer.
The driver files inside almost every maker installer are standard Inf, Cat, and Sys files. Once extracted, the operating system can install them with the built-in "have disk" flow.
How to Extract
Most maker installers are self-extracting archives. A general-purpose archive tool (open-source ones work well here) can open them and show the contents. Look for a folder containing the Inf file — that is the driver itself.
For installers that are not standard archives, run the installer to its first prompt — the staging folder it creates usually contains the driver files. Copy them out before cancelling the install.
Installing the Extracted Driver
In Device Manager, choose Update Driver and pick "Browse my computer" then "Let me pick" then "Have Disk." Point to the folder containing the Inf file. The operating system reads the Inf, validates the Cat, and installs the driver cleanly.
This is the same flow administrators use for offline installs in environments that do not allow general-purpose installers to run.
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