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[Unattended] pnp ripper
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From: <ale...@ya...> - 2003-09-24 08:59:15
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Kevin, You're not stupid. Microsoft's hotfixes and patches system is stupid, but that's another topic. You run the tool on a PC fresh out of the box. It will make a zip file containing all the drivers that were pre-installed on the PC as it came from the factory. The tool asks you to enter a description of the PC. This gets used in our menu. The tool asks you if the PC is a desktop or laptop. This helps us install laptop specific apps later in the build. You get to choose filename for this bunch of drivers (8 character dos limit.) The tool then reads the DriverPath registry key to find where the vendor's drivers are located on the PC. It then adds each folder in the driverPath to a zip file. When it's run out of folders it adds the details you typed in to an ini file in the zip file, you can use this for a menu system. It also creates an ini file containing an OEMpnpDriversPath value that you can insert in your unattend.txt file to be used during unattended windows setup. You end up with a zip file containing all the drivers you need for that make and model of PC. You can build up a collection of these zip files, one for each kind of PC in your company. Your build can enumerate your collection of zip files to build a pick list that the desktop engineer sees when installing your standard build. The tool is easy to use so engineers can run it on new, straight out of the box, PCs if they suspect the drivers for that fancy new laptop aren't in the build already. This tool does indeed mean you don't have to make and maintain a single HUGE driver library. With around 20 makes and models in our environment this was too much of a headache and changes to the driver library were unpredictable. MS hotfixes and patches, now they're unpredictable, but that's another topic. Did you know IE6 cumulative patches don't do version checking and can downgrade files. I dispair. Alex --------------------------------- Want to chat instantly with your online friends? Get the FREE Yahoo!Messenger |