Printer Migration in Windows 7 but why only the printer?

Printer Migration

Have you ever had to restore a computer and then download all of the drivers for everything?  One of the biggest drivers that you inevitably have to download is the printer driver and software.  It always seems to be excessively large and takes forever to install.  A new tool in Windows 7 called  Printer Migration (printbrmui.exe) takes care of just this problem.

Once you execute the Printer Migration it walks you through a couple of very easy steps and creates a package for easy installation on any Windows 7 computer.  For my particular printer (HP all-in-one) the package is at almost 22 MB.  Inside the package are drivers, queued print jobs, and the port configurations.  The package is essentially a zip archive that is easily uncompressed if you need something in particular such as just drivers.  It’s even easier to import the package back in to the machine which takes care of installing the printer as well as the previously queued jobs.

Now if only Microsoft would do the same thing for the rest of the drivers on a machine.  It can be a pretty difficult task to retrieve drivers after a restore but thankfully Windows 7 is substantially better than it’s predecessors at retrieving and installing device drivers.

Printer Migration 2

Printer Migration 3