neowin[.]net/guides/how-to-keep-your-drivers-when-reinstalling-windows-no-internet-connection-needed/
learn.microsoft[.]com/en-us/powershell/module/dism/export-windowsdriver?view=windowsserver2025-ps
learn.microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/pnputil-command-syntax
learn.microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/pnputil-examples
deploymentresearch[.]com/back-to-basics-pnputil-exe-vs-pnpunattend-exe/
Drivers are the middlemen acting as interpreters between the device's hardware components and the OS [Operating System] -- without them those components do not work. Anything having to do with drivers can be a Giant PITA, but the good news is that probably most people won't ever have to bother. Both Microsoft & Linux have gotten pretty good at providing basic drivers for a wide assortment of hardware, so *most often* installing Windows or Linux just works.
But there are thousands of companies making components for PCs, laptops, & tablets, and you might find [or have] something like a network or WiFi chip that's been made by an obscure, often smaller firm, that may no longer be in business. Odds are neither Microsoft nor the Linux community has ever heard of them, and finding a driver to download and install would be impossible. At the same time, many companies do not want to give the software they developed to Microsoft, or at least give them all of it, supplying the bare minimum instead. In either case, if you ever decide or have to install a copy of Windows fresh -- Not running setup from within Windows, but wiping the disk and starting all over from scratch -- you could have problems. Some things may not work because drivers are missing, or because Windows tries to use the wrong drivers [it happens], or because the drivers Windows installed automatically just basically suck.
One way around that, with caveats, is to store a copy of all the drivers installed on your device, giving you a copy of every driver in case you ever want/need it. The manual way is to just copy the C:\Windows\ System32\ DriverStore\ FileRepository\ folder to an external drive or USB stick etc. The method in the Neowin article uses DISM [it's built into Windows] to copy just the drivers Windows actually uses -- that can save you a Lot of storage space since Windows setup puts a Lot of generic drivers in that folder which are not used. Then PnPUtil is used to install those stored drivers in [your fresh copy of] Windows.
"Here is the full process:Open Start, type powershell, then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter instead of Enter. This launches PowerShell elevated and triggers a UAC prompt, which you need to accept before either command below will work.
Create a destination folder before exporting anything. DISM throws an error and exports nothing if the folder doesn't already exist: mkdir C:\DriverExport
Export every third-party driver currently installed on the system: dism /online /export-driver /destination:C:\DriverExport
Copy the DriverExport folder to a USB stick or a second internal drive, one that won't get wiped during the reinstall.
Wipe the drive and install a clean copy of Windows as usual.
On first boot, open an elevated PowerShell window again using the same Ctrl+Shift+Enter shortcut.
Point pnputil at the copied folder to bulk-import every driver that matches the current hardware: pnputil /add-driver C:\DriverExport\*.inf /subdirs /install"
Gotchas... as per the last link up above, PnPUtil may choke on installing too many drivers. The drivers stored in that repository do not include the setup files or routines that are often included in driver downloads, and installing them without that stuff may not work, or you may have reduced functionality. Windows can decide it doesn't like whatever driver, and make it difficult or even out right refuse to install it. Windows can miss-ID components, insisting that the component is something else. The list sadly goes on...
That all said, what I expect would be the most likely circumstance, is you find you have to perform an unplanned fresh reinstall of Windows. And once Windows is up and running you find that something, I'll say WiFi, isn't working. So you right-click the Start Button, click Device Mgr., and there under Network Adapters there's an exclamation point next to the Wireless LAN card. So you right click that card, select Update drivers, and then click Search automatically... It fails. So you do the same thing but instead of clicking the Auto search you click Browse my computer... and point it to search the folder where you've stored all those drivers from the repository [make sure you check the box to include sub-folders]. Ideally problem solved.