How does windows handle devices and their drivers?

[Nitr0]

Hello,

Don't know if this is the right place for this question but since you guys are quite into adding drivers to unattended installation I hope you can help me with my problem. First of all let me introduce myself. I'm a repackager who recently got the assignment to build a package which contained a piece of synchronisation software and a device driver for several types of Palm handhelds. With the term package I mean MSI cause that is used for deployment through Active Directory.

My first problem is that MSI by default doesn't support a way to install device drivers ( the nice way that is ... ) so I have to make some sort of script which installs an INF file. Ok, limitation of windows installer itself ... but nothing to do about it.

Through several INF functions like InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall ( for the experts among us ) I can manage to install the driver through scripting. Second problem is when another Palm Handheld is put on the cradle I again get the add new hardware wizard. Strangely it looks like he can't find the installed drivers but when I select automatic install in the wizard it finds the same driver I installed earlier. It does this for every new Palm I put on this cradle. When I put the same Palm on there I don't get the wizard again.

I know Windows XP ( cause that's the OS we're deploying to ... ) has something of a giant cab file which contains all drivers known by Windows XP called drivers.cab and is located in the Driver Cache folder.

Well Nitr0 what's your real problem I hear you guys think I just want to know if there is a way to make those add new hardware wizards not appear by adding those drivers to the correct location before a handheld is connected. Is there a way to put those drivers into the already existing drivers.cab? I tried to create my own cab and changed the drvindex.inf like stated somewhere else in this forum but that didn't help. I also don't seem to have it clear how windows handles new devices in combination with existing drivers. How does it check if those drivers already exist and which paths will it check? I don't expect someone can give me a complete and solid solution for this ( although it would be greatly appriciated ) but if someone could explain the whole driver installation process for me that could already help me alot.

Thanks in advance.

Nitr0

[GoeniGoeGoe]

When I use nLite to strip my WinXP setup and add device drivers, I always see some sort of progress bar with the text "Extracting CAB" => "Integrating Drivers" => "Packing CAB". So I think this program is doing what you want to do for your own XP CD, maybe you can ask around the forum of the nLite site (http://nuhi.msfn.org/) or send a mail to the creator of the prog? Maybe it helps...later