• avamk
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  • Registered: 2014-05-02
  • Posts: 4

Topic: Sysprep Windows 7 image with DriverPacks set to unattend-ly install?

Hello,

After a few weeks of learning all this stuff from scratch, I've created a Windows 7 Professional image with sysprep (with the /generalize and /oobe options) for our organisation that can be easily deployed to many systems (I used the Windows System Image Manager to create the unattend.xml answer file). However, the last remaining problem is that the target computers vary greatly in their hardware composition.

Is it possible to download the DriverPacks I am interested in (such as LAN, Graphics A, etc.), add them to the reference image, and run sysprep in a way so that hardware detection and driver installation happens automatically (without user intervention) upon deployment and startup? I'd also love it to clean up after itself by removing all remaining files/unused drivers after deployment.

So far I've found a couple of guides that seems to show how to do this for Windows XP, but I can't seem to find one for Windows 7. Also (and I am not sure if I am even understanding the post correctly), mr_smartepants' SAD2 appears close to what I am looking for, but the included guide applies to adding DriverPacks to an installation disc, not a sysprepped image for deployment.

Does a guide for what I'd like to do exist? Or can someone give me some pointers for how to achieve it? Thanks!!!

  • From: Cambridgeshire, UK
  • Registered: 2007-01-27
  • Posts: 6,226

Re: Sysprep Windows 7 image with DriverPacks set to unattend-ly install?

Yes, you can add whatever drivers you want directly to your image using DISM/MDT or other tools but your "driverstore" folder will be massive and not easily purged.
I would still recommend our SAD utility but you'd have to add a runonce key to the registry to execute SAD and then have the script nuke itself and all folders once completed.  Shouldn't be too hard.

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  • avamk
  • DriverPacks newbie
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  • Registered: 2014-05-02
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Re: Sysprep Windows 7 image with DriverPacks set to unattend-ly install?

mr_smartepants wrote:

I would still recommend our SAD utility but you'd have to add a runonce key to the registry to execute SAD and then have the script nuke itself and all folders once completed.  Shouldn't be too hard.

Yes, adding a couple of runonce entries to my unattend.xml did the trick nicely on a test machine. The SAD utility was able to find and install the relevant drivers. Thanks!!

  • Ahsen
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  • Registered: 2015-09-01
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Re: Sysprep Windows 7 image with DriverPacks set to unattend-ly install?

avamk wrote:
mr_smartepants wrote:

I would still recommend our SAD utility but you'd have to add a runonce key to the registry to execute SAD and then have the script nuke itself and all folders once completed.  Shouldn't be too hard.

Yes, adding a couple of runonce entries to my unattend.xml did the trick nicely on a test machine. The SAD utility was able to find and install the relevant drivers. Thanks!!


Can you post here the complete process, How you did it?

  • avamk
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  • Registered: 2014-05-02
  • Posts: 4

Re: Sysprep Windows 7 image with DriverPacks set to unattend-ly install?

Ahsen wrote:
avamk wrote:
mr_smartepants wrote:

I would still recommend our SAD utility but you'd have to add a runonce key to the registry to execute SAD and then have the script nuke itself and all folders once completed.  Shouldn't be too hard.

Yes, adding a couple of runonce entries to my unattend.xml did the trick nicely on a test machine. The SAD utility was able to find and install the relevant drivers. Thanks!!

Can you post here the complete process, How you did it?

Sorry I'm no longer at that job, and it took me a while to unearth that old unattend.xml file. Looks like I added these things to the FirstLogonCommands section (just look at commands 3 and 4):

<FirstLogonCommands>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c del c:\windows\panther\unattend.xml</CommandLine>
                    <Order>1</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c del c:\unattend.xml</CommandLine>
                    <Order>2</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c &quot;C:\SDI\SDI_R104.exe /autoinstall /autoclose /license /norestorepnt &gt; C:\drivers_log.txt&quot;</CommandLine>
                    <Order>3</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c &quot;rmdir /S /Q C:\SDI &gt;&gt; C:\drivers_log.txt&quot;</CommandLine>
                    <Order>4</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c &quot;net user user /delete&quot;</CommandLine>
                    <Order>5</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c &quot;net user Administrator /active:yes&quot;</CommandLine>
                    <Order>6</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
            </FirstLogonCommands>

The key are commands 3 and 4 in the list. Looks like I put all the driverpacks and the SAD utility into the image's C:\SDI folder, ran it with the "/autoinstall /autoclose /license /norestorepnt" switches, pumped the output into a log file (C:\drivers_log.txt), then deleted all the used files with command 4.

Hope this is still useful for you!

Last edited by avamk (2015-09-14 10:06:13)