My personal blog about pre-installation and other topics : OPK

Driver installation and updating made easy: DPInst.exe

svengru — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:02:39 GMT

Installing or updating drivers on a system does always take a long time since you need to run many different driver installers to get all the devices in a system running. How about just running one installer and all your drivers are installed afterwards? A dream? Stop dreaming and do it right now with the Driver Package Installer (DPinst).

The details are here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791049.aspx

DPInst is part of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK). More details here: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/WDK/default.mspx

So, how can you use this tool?

Download the WDK in order to get the latest version of DPInst (can be found under the “DIFx” tools)
Create a new directory e.g. “c:\drivers” and copy DPInst.exe to that directory
Note: There is a different version for x86 and x64
Create a dpinst.xml file to control DPinst.
All possible settings can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791067.aspx
An example can look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<dpinst>

<search>
      <subDirectory>*</subDirectory>
    </search>

<language code="0x0409">
      <dpinstTitle>Device Driver Updater</dpinstTitle>
      <welcomeTitle>Welcome to the Device Installer!</welcomeTitle>
      <welcomeIntro>This wizard will walk you through updating the drivers for your device.</welcomeIntro>
      <installHeaderTitle>Installing the software for your device...</installHeaderTitle>
      <finishTitle>Congratulations! You finished installing your device drivers.</finishTitle>
    </language>

</dpinst>

Create sub directories for drivers and place the driver files (.inf, .sys, cat, .dll, etc.) into these directories.
My example looks like this:
Copy the complete directory to an external storage drive or network location and execute DPInst.exe to install / update the drivers
on that machine. This dialogue will be displayed and pressing “Next” will start the installation…

Done. :-) This will save a lot of your time.

I created a sample package that contains all necessary files for x86 and x64. You can get it here:

This sample also contains a script “installdrvs.cmd” which shows you how to use DPInst in silent mode.

Using DPInst in silent mode as part of your Windows XP or Windows Vista installation does work very well and is faster than using
a “Driver Path” in an unattend file as it will only install the drivers that match your hardware and not all drivers present in the driver directory.
So one example would be to add a driver folder containing DPinst,the dpinst.xml file and all drivers to the $OEM$\$1\ folder
(This will be on the C:\ driver after the installation) and then call installdrvs.cmd as “RunSynchronousCommand” during “Audit User” phase of
the Windows Vista setup. Looks like this in System Image Manager:

Have fun.

A guide to use WDS for OEM pre-installations… not really, but some good tips and samples

svengru — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:48:00 GMT

This is not a complete WDS guide as the title already indicates, but I want to share some examples and best practices.

The generic WDS install guide can be found here:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/library/7d837d88-6d8e-420c-b68f-a5b4baeb52481033.mspx?mfr=true

This will help you to setup or optimise your own WDS sever to do OEM pre-installations of Windows Vista and Server 2008.

The most common issue I found is that people are not aware of the different answer files that a WDS server uses, so let’s start with this one.

There are two different answer files:

An unattend.xml file that controls the Windows PE phase (connect to the WDS server, load storage driver, partition the disk, etc.) of the setup
This one needs to be place in “c:\RemoteInstall\WdsClientUnattend\”. Than right-click on your WDS server in Server Manager and select properties.
The following dialogue will be displayed and you can select the unattend file:

Change the settings as displayed and select the unattend file that you created and placed in “c:\RemoteInstall\WdsClientUnattend\”.
I created a sample unattend.xml file for you that you can download here:

You need to edit this file using "System Image Manager” (part of the OPK) to change your server, username & password details.
This sample includes an entry that points to “c:\RemoteInstall\StorageDriver-x86” for storage driver updates. You need create that directory or delete the entry.
The image unattend file. This file controls the rest of the setup process and is image specific.
You can still use one answer file for all your images including Windows Vista and Server 2008. There is no need to create separate ones.
Right-click on an Install Image and select properties. Make the changes as shown below and select an unattend file:

I created a sample file as well. This one works for Windows Vista and Server 2008. Get is from here:

This Zip-File contains the sample unattend file and a sample “$OEM$” Folder as well. You need to edit the unattend file to change your support information.
Once you select an image in WDS for an install in unattended mode a new “install” folder that contains the unattend file you selected will be created.
This is “c:\RemoteInstall\Images\Vista SP1\install\” in my example. This folder contains a folder called “unattend”. In that folder is a copy of the unattend file you just selected.
Place the “$OEM$” sample in the “install” folder, so that this folder now contains the “unattend” and the “$OEM$” folder.

Try it! You will be able to do a fully unattend installation of Windows Vista or Server 2008 now. This installation will end in Audit Mode, so that you can continue to pre-install more applications.

The sample “$OEM$” folder also contains a script that will change the unattend file after the installation has finished and the PC enters Audit Mode.
This new unattend file is copied to ”c:\Windows\Panther” and controls the Sysprep and next OOBE experience.
This sample will keep all device drivers during the Sysprep Phase and not prompt the end-user for language and region specific settings during OBBE.

Windows Vista: Start Windows Update via script in Audit Mode

svengru — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:01:26 GMT

Windows Update is not enabled by default in Audit Mode.

This CMD script will enable it and check for updates:

NET STOP "Windows Update"
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update" /v AUOptions /t REG_DWORD /d 00000004
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update" /v ScheduledInstallDay /t REG_DWORD /d 00000000
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update" /v ScheduledInstallTime /t REG_DWORD /d 00000003
NET START "Windows Update"
WUAUCLT /DETECTNOW