Load Drivers from CD or DVD

[willpantin]

The problem with placing a temp Drivers folder on the hard drive is the extra time involved in copying the files over, when only some will be recognized and used for each computer model. Additional time is spent deleting the temp Drivers folder at the end as well.

I have opted for an Unattended DVD solution, and therefore have placed many different Graphics, Modem, and Audio drivers in my Drivers folder. It adds about 10-15 minutes to the Unnattended install to include them (still better than adding them later manually).

The very best solution, would be if there was some way to:

1. Not place a temp Drivers folder on Hard Drive, via "XPDVD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers"

2. Direct winnt.sif to look for drivers on driver folder on DVD, instead of using

"Drivers\Nvidia;Drivers\NvidiaGo;etc..."

Is there such a solution?

[yourtech]

Funny you should mention this...

I was trying to load them from a lan distribution point...

\\Server\distributionshare\drivers

didn't work

I tried to install them normally via \\Server\\distributionshare\$OEM$\$1\Drivers and that didn't work either...

could be something to do with this tho;

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18424

any ideas anyone?

[XtremeMaC]

how about installing the inf's seperately?

i mean say u have nv4_disp.inf right at some point in the setup

install the inf like this

rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %PathtoFiles%\nv4_disp.inf

u can have it anywhere on the cd and call it, another way of doing it would be with xplode....

[[BM]Crusher]

shouldn't this topic be under the device driver forum?

the only type of 'run from cd' installs that I have read about apply to installing applications off the cdrom....

the only thing I can suggest is to use the DetachedProgram setting to run a batch file that edits the registry settings for

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\    Windows\CurrentVersion\DevicePath

more than likely you will have to add REG.EXE to your $OEM$\$$\system32 incase it hasn't been copied by that stage of setup

reg /import device.reg

i can see this not working if gui setup is already detecting the hardware when the registry key gets changed, otherwise I don't see why it wouldn't work... that registry entry, that is the one that windows setup directly modifies based on the OEMPnPDriversPath entries

put a file called CD.TXT on your CD root directory, you will need to make the batch file that adds the registry settings to look like

cmdow @ /HID@echo off
IF EXIST D:\CD.txt set CDROM=D:IF EXIST E:\CD.txt set CDROM=E:IF EXIST F:\CD.txt set CDROM=F:
if "%CDROM"="D:" reg /import %CDROM%\Drivers\Reg\d-device.regif "%CDROM"="E:" reg /import %CDROM%\Drivers\Reg\e-device.regif "%CDROM"="F:" reg /import %CDROM%\Drivers\Reg\f-device.reg

and you will obviously have the 3 registry files each hard coded to point to a different drive, each modifying the registry for different CDROM paths

this is my best guess

if you want to load from a network share, use DetachedProgram to run a batch file that first runs subst and then changes the registry entry

@echo offsubst z: \\server\shares\driversreg /import z:\drivers.reg

oh, by the way, I have no idea if any of this will work... but it's pretty close i imagine

[[BM]Crusher]

if this works let me know... i'm sure other people will be interested in this too