Windows 8 “Driver Locker” concept
A number of different PC websites have been throwing around this concept of a “driver locker” in Windows 8 – some form of cloud / web based storage area for your hardware drivers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we already have that – it’s called Windows Update.
Now, you might say the reasoning for this dedicated driver locker is that Windows Update doesn’t always find your hardware driver. Surely then, the best solution would be to encourage hardware manufacturers to publish their drivers to Windows Update, instead of wasting countless hours and thousands of dollars in building a dedicated per-user storage system – especially when things like Dropbox or Windows Live SkyDrive already exist?
Another way of looking at it, is turning Driver Locker into an export t0 CD/DVD or USB solution. Consider this scenario: You have decided to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Anyone who has gone through a clean-install upgrade knows how hard it can be to find drivers. The Windows 8 Driver Collector would solve your problems – simply boot into your existing version of Windows, insert the Windows 8 DVD and run Driver Collector from the menu. It would enumerate your device drivers, copy them to USB or CD/DVD and also check Windows Update or hardware manufacturer’s website for updated / Windows 8 compatible drivers, and prompt you to download them (and save to USB or CD/DVD).
For new installations, Driver Collector would perform in a similar manner. On first boot Windows would prompt you to run Driver Collector to check for unknown drivers.
I can hear you asking “What about the devices Windows doesn’t know about – eg ‘Unknown Device’?” – well, there already are applications out there that go through your devices and check the device’s ID code against the application’s database. For Microsoft to write and support such an application would be trivial – it’s a long shot, but let’s hope something similar comes bundled with Windows 8 now that the idea is out there.