Topic: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

Does anyone see any reason why it would be a bad idea to inject all of the driver packs using DriverForge before i image a machine and ghost it and roll it out to new hardware? Currently i inject the correct drivers via syspreping. It works but i would like to not have to do that step and if i inject all the drivers before hand windows should have them all correct?
Any thoughts are welcome
Thanks
JustusIV

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

Driverforge wasn't designed to inject drivers into the registry beforehand. Driverforge was designed to be a post sysprep tool.

However, I will be adding that functionality at some point soon to FindHWIDs. You could always use Vernalex's Sysprep Driver scanner, which is exactly what my addition would be doing.

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

Ok maybe i miss understood what DriverForge was doing. I thought it was prepping all the drivers so that it would have them for plug n play. What your telling me is it only install the drivers of the hardware you have?

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

Yes exactly...

You can use vernalex's sysprep driver importer to create a list of drivers and install post sysprep

You'll want to have the exe in the same folder as this batch script

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Setting Driver Signing Policy to OFF
START WatchDriverSigningPolicy.exe
ECHO Importing Drivers to Registry
START /WAIT spdrvscn /p c:\D /e inf /d %windir%\inf /a /s /q
ECHO Starting Driver Manager
START devmgmt.msc
ECHO Starting Install of Hardware
START /WAIT RunDll32.exe Syssetup.dll,UpdatePnpDeviceDrivers
taskkill /f /im WatchDriverSigningPolicy.exe
taskkill /f /im mmc.exe

Last edited by stamandster (2009-02-27 07:08:20)

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

Currently i am using Offlinesysprep which looks to useing SPDrvScn on the back end of things.  Is it a bad idea to use SPDrvScn for all the driver packs? I see it says it can take a long time to go through the drivers but speed is the least of my concerns.

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

No it's not that bad. It's only going to install what it needs to install.

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

SPDrvScn won't work for mass storage drivers. It just updates the 'DevicePath' key in registry, but doesn't enter 'CriticalDeviceDatabase' or corresponding service entries. As such, on new hardware you will not survive first boot.

Regards,
Galapo.

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

Your absolutely right. You'll have to add the appropriate drivers manually in the sysprep.inf. I assumed he was doing this already.

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

Yes i believe i am already doing this via your method through OSP. Fantastic tool btw smile
I dont have any issue booting any of our hardware. And any that BSOD in the past was made short work of with OSP/BartPE/DriverPacks.
Thank you all!

*EDIT*
added more credit to all the tools smile

Last edited by JustusIV (2009-02-28 01:39:38)

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

I have made an image using OSP and injecting all the drivers. So far all hardware that i have imaged to works great.
I still have one little issue though that it prompts me on just a few drivers saying that i have newer ones in the image then the ones i am trying to use. I have a topic started over at barts forums about it if anyone has any input smile
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=22662

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

There's a option in dpinst.exe that allows you to override "if newer". I just don't remember what it is.

Re: Injecting all of driverpacks to computer before image with DriverForge

let's hope "if newer" is real smart and weighs from the sub-sub-sys down because version and date were (in oem drivers) not always trustworthy and they oft had common generic.

the driver update site at MSFT is getting much better too.
NON-critical drivers and those made obsolete or never in your "vanilla" are most likely picked up by an online msft driver search.
This takes one user setting for driver install. 'always allow online driver search" (I have to translate what I see.. it is one tick in a gui.)

The answer was 42?
Kind regards, Jaak.