Hi all, I watched the episodes of 70-411 pertaining to WDS and I am somewhat lost on how to create the driver packs you can add to WDS. I won't be taking the exams, I am looking into using WDS to replace our current imaging solution.
My question is how to harvest those drivers from a reference PC? What do you grab, how do you grab them,
A lot of times you don't get an inf, and sys file for that gets extracted. So what about those drivers that install programs like Intel HD Graphics Control Panel, synaptics touch pad utility, realtek audio control panel etc.
Thank you for any input,
Brian
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"Creating" driver packs for WDS
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Brian,
Great question, and one I have had to deal with multiple times in the past. Extracting the driver post-installation is rarely successful because of all the odd file dependencies and non-standard registry keys that get created. I usually don't even bother trying that route anymore. Here are a few other options to try instead:- Use the supported installation method from the driver's author. Many companies package their drivers in an MSI file to facilitate deploying them after the base OS is already installed (not so effective if it is a network card driver). If no MSI is available, there is usually a silent install method which works just as well. I checked the latest Synaptics driver as an example and its installer uses a "-s" for silent deployment. You could easily call a script to execute the installer silently on the appropriate systems.
- Even though you might not use it, look for SCCM packages. Many hardware vendors create deployment friendly driver packages to support SCCM. Fortunately, those same packages work great in WDS. Here is HP's SCCM Friendly Package page as an example. If you look at the release notes of one of the downloads they specify that the drivers are all in INF format and are deployment software friendly.
- You could always bake the driver into the base image, but that is not ideal if the driver includes any packaged software. No sense running extra programs on a PC for hardware that isn't even present.
- Some of the drivers may already support the INF based install method, but don't make it obvious. This is usually one of my last ditch methods, but when a driver is packaged as an executable file I always try running "filename.exe /x" to see what happens. Many vendors use "/x" as a method to extract the files from inside of the driver. That will often times result in the driver and software extracting and leaving you with the files you need in the normal INF format.
Hope that helps, and thanks for watching.
Don Pezet
Host, ITProTV
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Great reply, thank you very much!
