Re: FindHWIDS v3.2s - The INF Searching, Hardware ID Exporter
OUCH.
automated elimination in sysprep?
Let me tell you this;
txtmode vs pnp, a driver *'s txtsetup.OEM and driver *.INF will most often have different info.
Example: txtsetup.OEM may have a generic or five and two specifics and (possibly) one or two sub-sub-version (txtsetup.OEM rarely lists all. Rarely.. One can, however, find over five hundred hwids in the driver.).
You see?
Those txtsetup.OEM generic will re-appear in the INF (I see that they always do)
When the specifics and subs are the only ones reproduced in the INF, the generic could be automatically rubbed out by an automated prep tool.
(that is, IF a dupe generic is found.)
WHY do that?
Because chances are there are other similar drivers using same generic.
Version metrics (the weighing of value of older/newer) count will show in excell, and in PnP, but you will find that the newer loads in txtmode.
(the older may have the sub, and if the wrong driver is loaded in txtmode, pnp then causes a BSOD)
next;
Consider the difference with sysprep to disc based install;
The INF can have, and most often has, info on a wide variety of subs and some generics.
(take for example a gigabyte driver. Believe me for the example, it has over 214 UNIQUE HWIDs.. and that is after we filtered..)
Its txtsetup.OEM has 8 generic HWID lines. It is a fairly recent driver, but not the latest..
For disc based installs: We've been balancing our INI and we kept driver version in mind.
Now, here is a subtle difference between DriverPacks BASE enhanced and Microsoft's setup.
For LOADING TXTmode, we do not use txtsetup.OEM at all, we use mass-storage.INI.
(I know, the INI MIGHT be based on OEM, but most often it is based on INFs, or, in some cases a combination of filtered HWIDS strings found in drivers of same driver version INF files.)
Life is not easy for SYSpreppers.
SYSpreppers have to filter out all OS dupes by OS because their build cannot have any dupe hwid.
Most drivers have at least three hwids duplicated in scan tools.
Some OS sections do NOT duplicate a hwid because the OS has a native driver, OR because the vendor will not support the OS. You cannot just delete an entire OS section when you want to cull dupes. If you do NOT find a hwid in txtsetup.inf or dosetup.sif, you have no support for that hwid. YOU (brainpower) may correctly do this in sysprep, but an automated tool that did not get the OS in the readout.. may delete the wrong line.
did we say this was easy?
Last edited by Jaak (2008-09-19 15:40:53)
Kind regards, Jaak.