nvidia forceware 66.93 in an archive (reduce size)

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Andromeda, my compression method sorts out the files which are required by Windows for installation of the display driver. All the rest of the nVidia bloat is not required to run games or to use dualview. Hack, why was I using nLite

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I wonder the .inf files need no hacking in that case?

[maniaq]

sorry for writting again but please look here and tell is it going to work for me??tkank yu.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

No it won't work... You nowhere added the command to extract that archive...

An easy solution:

1) Download the DriverPacks BASE from my website. (check my sig)

2) Create your own DriverPack: it's in fact the same as what you did, except you have to choose other settings for your archive... For details, check the guide at my website.

3) It will be slipstreamed fully automatically, just follow the instructions.

[Morian]

Andromeda, my compression method sorts out the files which are required by Windows for installation of the display driver. All the rest of the nVidia bloat is not required to run games or to use dualview. Hack, why was I using nLite

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ok so after sorting out the files that are really needed I add the inf and cat files to $OEM$\$1\Drivers\[Display Folder] and add the compressed files to I386. Then use the unattended information?

[prathapml]

Quick Update: This batch file is still working fine even with the latest nVidia forceware drivers - v81.98 (only difference being, the nVidia graphics drivers folder is 30.1 MB by the end of the process).

I wonder the .inf files need no hacking in that case?

Correct.

nVidia drivers do not need any INF hacking, the control panel installs properly (thru INF) by default!

I would try another method of compression instead of compress.cmd if I only knew what was in data1.cab and data2.cab in the first place! The problem is that when I try to open either one of them I get the error message "the archive is either in unknown format or damaged". When I try to extract them with WinRAR I get "no archives found".

No, u can delete the data*.cab files. Its only part of the setup utility, not needed when you install drivers unattended (uA install of drivers happens thru INF files). Edited January 5, 2006 by prathapml

[prathapml]

The latest news is that ATi has become idiotic too - they also have compression in their drivers, as of catalyst v5.13

And its an obstruction to all those who anyways compress their driver folders (for OemPnpDriversPath method, or BtS driver-packs).

So here's a modified version of my batch-file for ATi Radeon drivers:

@echo off
TITLE ATi Radeon driver cleanup - for catalyst v5.13

ECHO undoing the idiotic compression
PAUSE
md expanded
expand *.*_ expanded
del /Q *.*_
cd expanded
ren *.dl_ *.dll
ren *.sy_ *.sys
ren *.ex_ *.exe
move /Y *.* ..
cd ..
rd expanded

Save the above code as a batch-file, using notepad, as "ati.cmd", on the desktop.

Then, run the ATi Catalyst setup, tell it to extract to the path "C:\ATi" and stop after it finishes extracting files.

Then go to the folder C:\ATi\XP2K_INF.

There you see a folder inside it, such as B_29225 - thats where the idiotic compressed driver files live.

Move the ATI.CMD file (which you made above), to that folder (B_29225).

Run it.

As of the catalyst version 5.13, it got expanded from 10.x MB to 18.8 MB - with 26 files in the B_29225 folder.

Thats it, rename the XP2K_INF folder as ATi, & compress it alongwith all your other drivers, into 7zip format - resulting in huge space saving. Then use your standard method of installing drivers unattendedly (thru INF in setup).

The ATi control panel, does not get installed directly from its INF, so its slightly more difficult - I wont mention how to install it in this post, please use the search function to find out.