Dynamic Driver System

[ritual33]

Hi,

I really hope somebody can help me with this as it's driving me crazy
and my boss is getting a tad fustrated with the time I'm taking with
this...

Our current sms setup is like this...

We have 1 image called 'Uni-image' which we need to use for over 300
machines each with similar hardware (compaq business machines). On the
image we just have the programs are required by everyone in our
business and then we package every other program up and give the users
access to the "Run Advertised Programs" window on the desktop as what
we call "Self Serivce".

The problem we have is drivers, we don't want to roll out the image to
300+ computers and find that we have to go round and reinstall 100+
drivers, if this happened it would be a bit of a disaster.

I have tried to copy the drivers from my sms box to the
"c:\windows\system32\drivers" + "c:\windows\inf" directories etc using
a custom action then use devcon.exe from microsoft to rescan for plug
and play devices. This doesnt seem to be working, when I go into
device manager after the computer has been images the drivers are not
installed but if I click "Update driver" it find the driver and starts
to install it but then I have to point it a few times to
c:\windows\system32\drivers and c:\windows\system32 etc.

Is there a clean way to have this "Dynamic driver system" I'm speaking
of or is this just pipe dreams?

Best Regards,
Drew

 

[Guest]

Depends what drivers you need to add.

If it's printers, then I find that the InstallRite package from
http://epsilonsquared.com works well for me. With this I just make a rollup
of the changes made by a printer install. Deploy the rollup, reboot, and you
have the printer, plus its settings such as IP port and paper size, ready to
use.

Ideally, rollups should be built starting with no printers installed, as
printers from the same manufacturer may share DLLs. I use the Kyocera Printer
Deleter to ensure this condition is met.

Possible drawback is that I don't think this would work for limited users,
the rollout has to write to the system32 folder and registry.

 

[ritual33]

I'm affraid this isn't for print drivers, it's for graphics, sound and
network drivers. File permissions isn't a problem as they will be
installed using SMS which uses a privilaged account.

 

[John John]

I don't know much of anything about SMS but I think that the OEM drivers
should go in a different folder. If you go to Microsoft.com and search
for OemPnPDriversPath you might find useful information. Also, the
drivers may not install because of Driver Signing Policy, some OEM's
don't sign their drivers. A search for DriverSigningPolicy will yield
additional information. Not really an answer to your question but
searching on these may yield the answers that you are looking for.

John