How to inject Drivers to Windows 10

[Ahmed Essam]

Hi All,

I need help to inject multiple drivers model to single windows 10 image i just created an answer file to automate windows 10 without any user interaction and it works like a champ, but now i intend to install this image to multiple workstations and laptops is there a way to add driver post install.

 

Thanks in advance

[Tripredacus]

If you are wanting to add the drivers post-install (so that the drivers do not exist in the install image) there are multiple ways to do it.

The first is the method that I use, where I am using DISM to apply the image to a partition. Then after the image is deployed, I can use DISM to add the driver to that offline installation. Like so:

DISM /IMAGE:C:\ /ADD-DRIVER /DRIVER:z:\folder\driver.inf

In that example, the driver is actually stored on a network share. Some drivers may be required to be copied to the ramdisk first before adding them this way, but so far I haven't run into any of those.

The second example is to make Windows do this work for you. There are various ways to do it, there are multiple unattend settings where you can specific a Synchronous command, or you can use FirstLogonCommands to do it. In this case, the drivers need to be accessible to the OS, whether they exist as a folder inside the image or if they are copied in afterwards using DataImage (which I have not tried in many years) or some other method. Then you can use a DISM command like so:

DISM /ONLINE /ADD-DRIVER /DRIVER:c:\folder\driver.inf

You may need to use the DISM from the ADK to do this, and if so then you would need to use absolute pathing to DISM.exe so that Windows doesn't try to use the one that is built into the OS.

There is also an unattend option you can find called DriverPaths in Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsNonWinPE, which lets you specify a network path for where the drivers are stored, and Windows will add them to the image IF you are installing to Audit Mode.

There are various other ways to do it also, but an all-in-one option for installing different driver sets for different models of computer are outside of this general scope. If you are wanting a driver to be installed for a notebook, such as a touchpad software but do not want this software installed to a desktop, then you will need to use separate answer files for each or go down the path of creating (of finding) a system capable of detecting different hardware and using different deployment options.