Making Drivers Plug and Play
I use a Ghost to create a windows XP image. I use this image on about 6 or 7 different types of computers. Instead of using the image and then having to install drivers i wanted to just be able to add all the different drivers into the image and have windows XP detect and automaticaly use the correct drivers. I was wondering, where/how do I add drivers to windows xp so it can automaticly detect and chose the correct drivers.
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Also keep in mind that techincally the licensing for Ghost is required for EVERY different PC you put the image on.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314479
The process by which you add OEM-supplied drivers to a Windows Sysprep Setup is similar to the procedure described in the "Unattended Setup" section of this article, except that you do not have to create the distribution share. To add drivers to the mini-setup wizard of Sysprep, follow these steps: 1. On the root of the volume where the %WinDir% folder is located, create a folder structure to hold the OEM-supplied drivers. For example:
\Drivers
- - \NIC
- - \VIDEO
\Sysprep
\WINNT
2. Copy the OEM-supplied drivers to their appropriate subfolders.
3. Add the OemPnPDriversPath = Driver_Paths entry in the [Unattended] section of the Sysprep.inf file. You can list multiple paths in this key by separating them with a semicolon (;), as shown in the following sample code:[Unattended]
OemPnPDriversPath = Drivers\NIC;Drivers\Video
Note The %SystemDrive% environment variable string is automatically inserted before each of the listed search paths.
If you do not want the OEM-supplied drivers to remain on the volume after mini-setup is completed, you can place the folder structure that you created in the preceding step in the Sysprep folder. Make sure that you adjust the OemPnPDriversPath = key appropriately. The Sysprep folder (along with all of its subfolders) is automatically removed after Setup is completed.
Save the Sysprep.inf file in the Sysprep folder, and then run Sysprep.exe. All Plug and Play devices (including those found by using the OEM driver .inf files) are automatically installed during mini-setup on the target computers. Note that you do not have to specify the -pnp command-line switch unless there are earlier version (ISA) devices on the target computers. If you use the -pnp command-line switch, a full Plug and Play re-enumeration of all devices is performed. This adds 5 to 10 minutes to the Sysprep mini-setup process.