General principles of Acronis Universal Restore
1. Automatic selection of HAL and mass storage drivers
Acronis Universal Restore searches the Windows default driver storage folders (in the image being restored) for HAL and mass storage device drivers and installs drivers that best fit the target hardware.
You can specify a custom driver repository (a folder or folders on a network drive or CD) which will also be used to search for drivers. In addition, Acronis Universal Restore can search drivers on removable media.
The Windows default driver storage folder is determined in the registry value “DevicePath”, which can be found in the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DevicePath. This storage folder is usually WINDOWS/inf.
2. Installing drivers for Plug-and-Play devices Acronis Universal Restore relies on the built-in Plug-and-Play discovery and configuration process to handle hardware differences in devices that are not critical for the system start. This includes video, audio and USB. Windows takes control over this process during the logon phase. If some of the new hardware is not detected, you will have a chance to install the drivers for it later manually.