Image Engineering

Driver Management

A driver is a small piece of software that tells the operating system and other software how to communicate with a piece of hardware.

• Types of Drivers
• Deployment process
• Command Line Parameters

Types of Drivers

• NICE Drivers - Drivers that install using an INF file.
• BAD Drivers - Drivers that must be "installed" - This could be a Bluetooth driver, finger print reader software or even DVD software that is specific to a particular model type. I also refer to these drivers as "Hardware based applications".

Deployment process

• Host OS - These are drivers that are installed on the Host OS.
• Boot images - These are drivers that are required by the MDT and ConfigMgr Windows PE boot images to enable OS deployment. The key driver types are network and mass storage drivers.

Command Line Parameters

Use one of the following command examples to extract the driver files from the different package types:

•       c:\iata_cd.exe -a -a -pc:\<path>
•       c:\iata_enu.exe -a -a -pc:\<path>
•       c:\setup.exe -a -pc:\<path>

When the command is run, the installation process begins; simply click through the dialogs as prompted. This will not install the driver; it will only extract the driver files to <path>. After the extraction is completed, the driver files can be found in <path>\Driver.