• Registered: 2006-07-19
  • Posts: 12

Topic: Somebody knows how to extract the OEM drivers from the windows XP CD?

I always had a dream: being able to remove all of the hundred OEM drivers from the XP's CD using nLite and then reinstalling only the drivers needed through a tool. That would save a lot of space plus hardware detection and windows setup would be faster (smaller driver cache database, less files to copy). DriverPacks could help me make that dream a reality, as soon as I figure out how to extract all the drivers from the XP CD and make a driverpack out of them. I thought the drivers were stored in the DRIVER.CAB archive but I found out there's some other stuff there so I believe there's a setup file somewhere that could be used to build an index of all the driver and extract them. Anybody here has a tutorial or knows a tool that could allow me to get all the drivers out of an XP install CD? I could write the tool myself with the right instructions so help from anybody who has a clue of where I should start looking would too be greatly appreciated.

Last edited by Francesco (2008-05-28 05:42:15)

  • OverFlow
  • DriverPacks Administrator & BASE Developer
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  • Registered: 2006-12-02
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Re: Somebody knows how to extract the OEM drivers from the windows XP CD?

the drivers are only around 100 meg and they are all certified drivers for very popular hardware.
We depend on them being there... as these drivers are not in the packs and they never will be.

I see no benefit to this exercise the one hundred meg would just end up in a pack that needs downloading which is slly since they are included in windows. the time required to search them is seconds. so this will not save time or space and it will take many lhours of your time to accomplish.

so to review... huge time to implement and no benefits...
our goal is to support all hardware so removal of drivers is not the direction we are going.

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  • Registered: 2006-07-19
  • Posts: 12

Re: Somebody knows how to extract the OEM drivers from the windows XP CD?

OverFlow wrote:

the drivers are only around 100 meg and they are all certified drivers for very popular hardware.
We depend on them being there... as these drivers are not in the packs and they never will be.

I see no benefit to this exercise the one hundred meg would just end up in a pack that needs downloading which is slly since they are included in windows. the time required to search them is seconds. so this will not save time or space and it will take many lhours of your time to accomplish.

so to review... huge time to implement and no benefits...
our goal is to support all hardware so removal of drivers is not the direction we are going.

I didn't mean that I wanted a downloadable driverpack with the XP drivers: that would be illegal because it would contain XP files whose distribution is prohibited by the EULA. I wanted to know if there's a tool to get the OEM drivers out of the CD so I can build my own driverpack from it or if somebody could give me hints of what to look after so I could write one (for example if there's a file in the CD that has an index of the INF files the setup searches when installing).  The drivers XP ships with beside a few generic drivers (bluetooth, USB, webcams, IDE) that should be kept are all legacy drivers for hardware no longer on sale and most of which have newer versions available: now that the latest driverpacks base allows the drivers being loaded on an already installed windows there are no reasons to keep them always installed so I think that would be a good idea to remove them from the CD and put them in a driverpack that would be deleted after setup ends along with others. I'm not asking you to implement anything, if there isn't a tool or an easy way to get them out I'll write a tool myself and send it to you if you're interested into publishing it along with the driverpacks base. I'm pretty sure that there are people with old PCs, PCs with SDD drives or UMPCs that would really appreciate a way to make their XP install as small as possible by saving also the drivers' space.

  • OverFlow
  • DriverPacks Administrator & BASE Developer
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  • Registered: 2006-12-02
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Re: Somebody knows how to extract the OEM drivers from the windows XP CD?

what you seek is contained in txtsetup.sif and dosnet.inf

i dare say if you were not able to come up with that on your own
then your biting off more than you can chew.

This is OFF Topic In that it is not related to DriverPacks at all
driver removal is not a supported feature of DriverPacks (obviously)

this IS a supported feature of nLite
you may find that you have excellent support there
Since it is within the scope of what they do.

although i will leave you with one thought
you could use nLite to remove them all
and then you could create a custom 3rd party DriverPack with your deleted drivers and call it
DP_XP_Drivers_that_I_didn't_really_want_deleted_after_all.7zip  tongue

(i was teasing as i wrote this but i think it is valid to do what you want
however i don't think you will find better drivers than the included ones
and as you say they are licensed)

We try our very best to make no changes to the installation disk at all...
it is also a primary goal to operate within the spirit of the MS EULA
and as such we avoid entirely or given no alternative limit to a bare minimum any changes we make .

I do actually see the potential benefit of reducing the initial footprint of windows on the target machine.
at the same time i believe the installation that results would not be eligible for support
I believe it is OK for you to explain how to make your 3rd party DriverPack as long
as you don't package and distribute windows files wink
That certainly you could grow into a tool of some sort that an end user could use...
Giving back to the community is never a bad thing, it is self perpetuating...

again this is simply outside of our scope at DriverPacks...
Except for the part about instructions for a user created 3rd party DriverPack...
Those would be appropriate to that forum.
if you have any questions about creating one please ask.

have a nice day...

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  • Registered: 2006-07-19
  • Posts: 12

Re: Somebody knows how to extract the OEM drivers from the windows XP CD?

OverFlow wrote:

what you seek is contained in txtsetup.sif and dosnet.inf

i dare say if you were not able to come up with that on your own
then your biting off more than you can chew.

I already gave a look at those files and was already thinking about recognizing the needed INF files by looking at the destination directory id in txtsetup.inf (20 = windows\inf folder) but I was hoping there was a more detailed list in some other file.

OverFlow wrote:

This is OFF Topic In that it is not related to DriverPacks at all
driver removal is not a supported feature of DriverPacks (obviously)

this IS a supported feature of nLite
you may find that you have excellent support there
Since it is within the scope of what they do.

Yes I know it's a supported feature of nLite this is why I mentioned it in the 1st post. I didn't want to ask for any feature I was just looking for information.

OverFlow wrote:

although i will leave you with one thought
you could use nLite to remove them all
and then you could create a custom 3rd party DriverPack with your deleted drivers and call it
DP_XP_Drivers_that_I_didn't_really_want_deleted_after_all.7zip  tongue

(i was teasing as i wrote this but i think it is valid to do what you want
however i don't think you will find better drivers than the included ones
and as you say they are licensed)

That's exactly what I am trying to do: making a driverpack out of the CD drivers so that I could remove them all with nLite yet having them installed by DriverPacks and avoid issues with hardware like some softmodems and webcams that work only with the OEM drivers.

OverFlow wrote:

We try our very best to make no changes to the installation disk at all...
it is also a primary goal to operate within the spirit of the MS EULA
and as such we avoid entirely or given no alternative limit to a bare minimum any changes we make .

And that's a very good policy, I can't keep count the number of broken XP installs I saw because of something nLite screwed up. It took a long while for nLite to reach the level of reliability it has now.

OverFlow wrote:

I do actually see the potential benefit of reducing the initial footprint of windows on the target machine.
at the same time i believe the installation that results would not be eligible for support
I believe it is OK for you to explain how to make your 3rd party DriverPack as long
as you don't package and distribute windows files wink
That certainly you could grow into a tool of some sort that an end user could use...
Giving back to the community is never a bad thing, it is self perpetuating...

As soon as I figure out how to get the drivers out I'll publish the instructions online (here or on MSFN if you think it would be offtopic here).

OverFlow wrote:

again this is simply outside of our scope at DriverPacks...
Except for the part about instructions for a user created 3rd party DriverPack...
Those would be appropriate to that forum.
if you have any questions about creating one please ask.

have a nice day...

I've already made driverpacks in the past so that shouldn't be a problem. Thanks again for your help and sorry if I have been off-topic.

Last edited by Francesco (2008-05-28 16:26:11)

  • OverFlow
  • DriverPacks Administrator & BASE Developer
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  • From: Cincinnati
  • Registered: 2006-12-02
  • Posts: 6,730

Re: Somebody knows how to extract the OEM drivers from the windows XP CD?

based on your responses i belive you are prepared... and wish you luck...
there may still be a lurker who will chime in with a cheat sheet for you wink

We are all aware that the drivers are removable with nLite that needs no instructions.

If you are able to assemble a pack of Drivers that are equivilent to the included windows drivers then that would be a valid pack to submit to 3rd party DriverPack as a complete pack. just not the ones directly off the windows cd...
You could call it something obvious like  DP_XPDriverPackSoYouCanDeleteThemWithnLite.7zip LOL... wink

Welcome aboard...

ps i was telling you it was off topic not to get rid of you
but to tell you you may not get quality or timely help. wink

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  • Registered: 2006-05-27
  • Posts: 83

Re: Somebody knows how to extract the OEM drivers from the windows XP CD?

Using 7zip compression of the default XP drivers would be more efficient anyway. I support this man's movement. lol