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Restoring network virtual driver

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Hi,

I have two machines with the exact same hardware and bios settings.
I made an Acronis 11 True Image from one of the machines(Windows 7) and I need to restore it on the other machine. This works great except I have a manually applied virtual driver assigned to one of the network connections(Intel 82583V) and it needs to stay that way. However after I restore the image and run windows the virtual driver is not applied instead windows finds the original Intel driver and applies it.
Both machines have the exact same hardware this includes the network adapters.
How can I restore the image such that the virtual driver is still linked with the network connection?

Thanks!

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I am not sure you will be able to do that because Windows will check the hardware IDs and Plug-and-Play will kick in automatically to make sure the "right" drivers are installed.

Hi,

Thanks for your quick reply.
If I restore the image on the same computer I made the image from, the virtual driver is applied. Do you know why this works on the same computer but not on another computer with exactly the same hardware?

Doorman,

I am guessing that is because Windows plug & Play mechanisms kick in when the OS realizes that the hardware is technically the same but has different identifiers (for example different Security IDs)