Adding device drivers to Windows installations

This section explains the process for adding a device driver to a Windows installation task.

About this task

To add device drivers to your Windows installations, you must install System Enablement Packs (SEPs). Any uninstalled SEPs are automatically installed when you run the SGTKWinPE.cmd script. You can also install SEPs manually by using the InstallSEPs.cmd script. For more information about SEPs, see Downloading and installing System Enablement Packs (SEPs).

After a SEP has been installed, the device drivers used by the Toolkit are located in the sgdeploy\drvs directory. During installation, the Toolkit reads the Supported Systems and Windows Version fields in the DrvSet.ini file and uses that information to locate the correct device driver set for the deployment. The Toolkit then matches this information to the DrvInfo.ini file in each device driver subdirectory and adds the drivers to the deployment, if the platform ID of the system being deployed is in the Supported Systems field of the file.
Note: The platform ID of a system is the first two characters of its BIOS or uEFI build ID. For example, a System x3250 M3 can have a uEFI build ID of GYE135A, making the platform ID for that system GY. Identifying and installing device drivers by a system's machine type is still supported, but only if that system's platform ID is not present in either the DrvSet.ini or the DrvInfo.ini file.

Procedure

To add a device driver to an existing driver set, follow these steps:

  1. Ensure that either the platform ID or machine type, but not both, of the system supported by the driver is present in the Supported Systems field of the DrvSet.ini file in the root directory of the driver set to which you are adding it.
  2. Create a new subdirectory with no spaces or special characters in the root directory of the driver set.
  3. Copy your driver files into the new directory. Do not create any subdirectories under this new directory. Here the term "driver files" refers to raw data files (typically *.inf, *.sys, *.dll, *.cat). If the device driver that you have is an executable program, install it to a system, and then fetch the raw data file from the installation directory.
  4. Create a new DrvInfo.ini file in the new directory. The easiest way to do this is to make a copy of a DrvInfo.ini file from one of the other driver folders already present in the driver set.
  5. Update the following fields in the DrvInfo.ini file as follows:
    Installation Mode
    Set to:
    • PnP for all drivers for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012.
    Supported Systems
    The 2-digit platform ID or 4-digit machine type (but not both) of the system to which you are installing.
    Path
    If the Installation Mode parameter is set to Textmode, this parameter must point to the txtsetup.oem file. Your driver directory must contain this file.

Example

The following example shows the required DrvInfo.ini fields for a network driver installation on an IBM BladeCenter HS22 with platform ID P9, machine type 7978:
Installation Mode = PnP
Supported Systems = P9
Path =
The following example shows the required DrvInfo.ini fields for a Windows Server 2008 storage driver installation using the machine type for a System x3850 M2, machine type 7141, platform ID A3:
Installation Mode = Textmode
Supported Systems = 7141
Path = txtsetup.oem
Parent topic: Customized deployment scenarios