Formatting my Laptop, need some help before i do it.

I have downloaded Windows7 to burn and format my laptop with, but in the past i have done this some times i have to find my Internet Drivers myself, so before i do it this time i wanna have the drivers ready so i don’t have to go to a friends house to download the drivers to put on my laptop. as i wouldn’t have internet access to download any drivers i need so i just wanna have internet drivers ready, But. i don’t know exactly which ones i need and where to get them from, so can some body tell me how i can find out which ones i need and help me find links please? thank you.
Answer #1
There are a lot of ways to find your drivers, I’m just going to list them in order from best to worst and not provide any details, there are Google articles for any one mentioned. You need either Ethernet or wireless drivers depending on how you connect (I’d recommend to get both just in case). So the ways are:
1. See if your laptop has a service tag and put its number to the manufacturers site, you’ll get drivers for the exact laptop you are holding.
2. Google your laptop model + drivers and again use any result pointing to the manufacturers site ONLY.
3. Go to the device manager at control panel and find your hardware ids ( google for a how-to). Search google using the Id numbers you found. Try to download the links of the vendor directly (the device’s vendor, not your laptop’s this time).
4. Find the names of your devices from device manager or by using a third party app like nirsoft’s Driverview and Google for “device name + driver”.
5. Use a third party program to backup your drivers to an external device and restore them after windows reinstallation, this assumes you are installing the same OS and version. The best free program for this is supposedly Double Driver, I wouldn’t know because I never use this method, tried in the past but these programs are buggy. Not recommended.
There are other ways too, I think I’ve listed the most important ones. For every choice make sure to choose the proper OS and version for the drivers, the one you are going to install of course not the one you currently use (I.e Windows 7 64-bit).
Answer #2
The above ( 1,2 & 3) is correct and good advice to follow. If you have win 7 already installed, then do a complete back up as a restore item and use this to do the new install, drivers should be kept t his way as well.