What should be the contents of a do-nothing, minimal, dummy .INF?

It must however run without returning any error. Please advise.

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BTW, any off-topic posts shall be deleted as soon as I see them...

This should work:

[Version]
signature="$Chicago$"

[DefaultInstall]

[UpdateInstall]

It may even work without the [updateInstall] section, depending on how it's called.

Edited December 12, 201213 yr by 5eraph

It may even work without the [updateInstall] section, depending on how it's called.

It may very well be my case. I intend to use dummy oemXX.inf files to substitute for the .INFs installed by some device drivers, so as to keep unbroken the oemXX numbering. Of course, I'll simply remove the corresponding .PNFs.

What should be the contents of a do-nothing, minimal, dummy .INF?

It must however run without returning any error. Please advise.

The answer that 5eraph gave above is exactly correct. Though in fact there can be any number of sections [xxx], as long as they are not "called" from the [DefaultInstall] key. Even if they are called they can be empty or commented out to do nothing.

This is what my temp Win9x INF file that I used to punch in things looked like. When it is set up like this it does nothing ...

;;; -=[TEMP]=-

[Version]

Signature="$CHICAGO$"

Provider="-=[TEMP]=-"

[DefaultInstall]

AddReg=Registry_Add

DelReg=Registry_Del

; [DestinationDirs]

; 10=Windows, 11=System, 12=IoSubSys, 13=Command, 14=Control Panel, 15=Printers, 16=Workgroup

; 17=INF, 18=Help, 19=Administration, 20=Fonts, 21=Viewers, 22=Vmm32, 23=Color, 25=Shared

; 26=Winboot, 27=Machine, 28=Host Winboot, 30=Boot Drv root, 31=Root of Boot Drv Host

; 00=Null (new) LDID, 01=Source Drv:\Path, 02=Temp Setup, 03=Uninstall, 04=Backup

[Registry_Add]

;;; add stuff here to punch in

[Registry_Del]

;;; add stuff here to pull out

[strings]

;;; place string definitions here

The [Registry_Add] and [Registry_Del] are actually processed because of the entries under [DefaultInstall] but it can't do anything because of the comments. It could simply have been set up like this ...

[DefaultInstall]

;AddReg=Registry_Add

;DelReg=Registry_Del

... or empty like 5eraph said ...

[DefaultInstall]

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BTW, any off-topic posts shall be deleted as soon as I see them...

Why so defensive?

Provided that is not considered off-topic, I would like to highlight how it makes little sense to be "tight" in the size of this dummy file in the sense that in the best case it will occupy 512 bytes (when not 4 Kbytes) so you can use the space to put in some comments, possibly useful, like info about the specific oemXX.inf "original" file it is going to replace ("meaningful placeholder" as opposed to "standard placeholder") .

jaclaz

to keep unbroken the oemXX numbering.

You can rename them, for example Oem21.inf to Oem5.inf, Oem21.cat to Oem5.cat and in the registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{GUID}\00XX]
infpath=oem5.inf

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\XXXX\VEN_XXXXDEVXXXX_XXXXXXXXXX\XXXXXXXX]
DeviceDesc='@oem5.inf,%...
Mfg='@oem5.inf,%...

Just search oem21 in registry and replace it with oem5, using common sense.

I do it regularly with VirtualBox drivers and some codec infs, I haven't used it on real devices since I haven't feel the need to, but I don't see why it shouldn't work. Maybe it wouldn't on some very complex drivers.

On Win 7+ (or Vista?) you have to deal with the Driver Store using RAPR.

GL

I'd rather not touch the registry for this series of experiments. Temporarily replacing files is faster and more easily reversible...