Driver install order question...

[Martin H]

In the MSFN 'Unattended Windows' guides driver section, there's stated to name the driver folders with numbers in the front, so as to force setup to install the drivers cronologically.

This makes perfect sence to me, but however, the thing i'm wondering about then, is that if you after having installed Windows, goes into '%windir%\setupapi.log' and checks in which order the drivers did install, then i can see that the install order isn't matching the order of the folders...

Instead, it looks to me like setup is detecting one PNP device at a time and then afterwards parses all the inf's in the folders listed in the devicepath reg-entry(%windir%\inf' etc.) for the specific hardware-id of that specific PNP device and then when the correct inf has been found, then it's used to install the driver...

So am i right in this and does it then mean that it's useless to add numbers infront of the driver folders ?

Btw, i'm installing my drivers uncompressed directly from CD by following the stickied guide from a06lp: 'Drivers from CD: Simple Method' (it's the method of using schalti's "CopyInf" idea and Pyron's SetupCopyOEMInf.exe etc.), but this shouldn't make any difference to what i described above...

Thank's in advance.

[Martin H]

I have found the answer myself:

also, it doesn't matter what you name the folders

(naming them in a numerical order has no effect on what order they get installed, windows goes through the detected hardware device ID's one at a time then checks all the driver folders for a matching driver... it's not going to look at your drivers in a numerical order and try to find matching hardware in numerical order, it just doesn't make any sense to numerically name the driver folders!!!)...

Source: http://www.msfn.org/board/-t19050.html&amp...st&p=129836

However, in that above-linked thread, then there's also this responce to the above quote:

It don't matter to me what they are called: I never go looking at them once installed. However, Microsoft tests have shown that it does prevent certain problems. Good enough for me: thier test lab is a lot bigger than mine. At some point in the decision chain, given that all else is equal, it must make a difference, it's only logical. Put the exact same driver in two different directories, and see which one gets installed ...

Source: http://www.msfn.org/board/-t19050.html&amp...st&p=129847

So, there's two different oppenions on this, but personally, then i'm confident in that '[bM]Crusher' is right in that the numerical order of the driver-folder names are irrelevant, since that can be seen by looking at setupapi.log...

However, if GreenMachine has something to say about this, then i would love to hear it, and also since i'm very currious about the part about MS should have done tests on this issue and found that the numerical order did make a change ??? (i have read all i could possibly found from MS about OEM drivers and driver ranking calculations etc)