WinPE Registry Driver Installation

[krawn]

I was wondering if anyone could help with some suggestions on the following. Let me briefly explain the scenario:

We are developing a single image end to end XP SP2 build for our company's estate of PC's. We will be deploying the image booting into WinPE version 2.0 via PXE and then using Altiris deployment imaging tools to load the image to the machine's hard disk.

Once the base image is loaded, we have scripts to identify the machine type from the base board, we then extract the correct driver set using the base board info and then load the registry hive which has been installed onto the PC into PE.

What we want to do from here is use the INF files for the drivers to install to the registry for the actual machine which we have just loaded up.

Has anyone done this or know of any tools that will allow us to install the drivers using the INF files to the loaded registry hive?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks.

Kam

Edited July 26, 2006 by krawn

[Br4tt3]

Hi!

I am not sure I am following u exactly. I am confident up to the point where u deploy XP (using Altiris) to the client computer recieving the XP installation. My questions are: Are u deploying WinXP images that have been syspreped to the client? As I understand it, Yes u are... from this point, are u refering on how to "insert" the model specific driver path into the "offline" registry of the syspreped machine from within WinPE?

In case the above goes with ur plan, I have the same solution in place, also using WinPE 2.0 to load an WinXP .wim image that has been syspreped onto a client, a script will then insert the model specific drivers into the offline registry of the client. Once this is done, the WinPE mode is exited and WinXP mini setup starts which will scan the DevicePath entry of the registry and scan any drivers found.

It goes something like this: (Logic of script )

1. Mount the offline registry of the newly deployed client to the WinPE 2.0 registry using < reg load >

2. Do a regread from within the .vbs script to read the DevicePath entry value. Save the value to an variable within the script from the clients temp hive.

3. Read my custom model specific .inf entries (the actual driver structure) to be included on top of the other into another variable.

4. Copy the drivers (model specific) to the client

5. Regwrite the combined value of the two previous variables back to the temphive.

6. Unmount the temphive and write back the value to the newly deployed client using < reg unmount or sumthing >

7. Done. Next time the machine boots mini setup will scan the newly added driver directories.

Oups... the DevicePath value uses: %value% to locate the directories... had a problem writing the "%" signs back and get it working so I also changed the use of the variables to hardcode it to the C: drive of the clients which suits me good.

Kind of cool to as this would let u update the driver structure/versions seperatly from the main base image.

Let me know if this works out for u or if u need some sample code from the script.

Edited July 31, 2006 by Br4tt3