The Oven

Project World => Talk about other things ... => Topic started by: Malok on December 30, 2019, 08:02:18 PM

Title: Driver Pack
Post by: Malok on December 30, 2019, 08:02:18 PM

Hi everyone,

Since early 2015 I have been working on a Driver pack for PE that includes hundreds of NICs and WIFI adapters, it includes every single chipsets made since the release of windows 10  :wink: and also every Mass storage drivers made by intel, via, amd, adaptec, All the Dell servers, and HP, IBM`s, Elite desk, pro desk, MEGA, JMicron, SATA, SAS. etc. With time and patience I was able to Considerably reduce the installed footprint of the driver pack to the point that the 1000 drivers takes only 90 MO in my PESE iso  :smile: 

Since a couple years this thing has become so polished and shiny, it always load all the third party drivers upon boot without any intervention, the Device manager looks like an installed version of Windows :grin:  Except display and sound that are not needed for our operations.

This has been a REAL advantage, because the technician uses is absolutely transparent and he get directly to things he have to accomplish instead of fighting drivers issues.

I have been trying to include this pack in XPE since a couple of months with no success. Only The Network Drivers are working everything else results in a Material error BSOD. Tried on 50 different computers. The guy who did the testing came back with a blue face.

Now I have read somewhere that XPE is not using the full Drivers Hive.  :sad:

Is it easily Doable to make XPE use the Whole Drivers Hive ? Because I think that's what breaks the installation of Chipsets and mass storage drivers of my pack at boot time. Since WinRe does not seems to need these to accomplish it`s basic tasks.

We are loading this PE on Hundreds of PC and servers without any issues.

Many will think that I`m Pushing it too far... I agree... But if it works in PESE, I think I could in XPE.

I`m not very good at this kind of driver troubleshooting, but tell me what you need, I`ll gather it for ya.

MaloK

Title: Re: Driver Pack
Post by: James on December 30, 2019, 08:55:40 PM

Quote

Now I have read somewhere that XPE is not using the full Drivers Hive.  :sad:

Is it easily Doable to make XPE use the Whole Drivers Hive ? Because I think that's what breaks the installation of Chipsets and mass storage drivers of my pack at boot time. Since WinRe does not seems to need these to accomplish it`s basic tasks.

Add To "Additions"

Code: [Select]

\Windows\System32\config\DRIVERS

Title: Re: Driver Pack
Post by: Malok on December 31, 2019, 12:21:01 AM

Thanks James,

Got it to boot without BSOD with your Help  :thumbsup: Chipset installed properly on 3 test machines but all failed to load third parties Storage drivers. I ran PNPUtils /all and there where a lot of missing files... will investigate that issue and modify the driver pack accordingly.

Thanks again for your quick response. this permit me to move forward with this task  :smile:

 

 

Title: Re: Driver Pack
Post by: James on December 31, 2019, 03:40:29 AM

you can also copy your additional Drivers to "Y:\Drivers"
Then unmark in pecmd.ini

Code: [Select]

//EXEC @!%WinDir%\System32\pnputil.exe /add-driver Y:\Drivers\*.inf /subdirs

Your Technician's can also build a Driver Data Base - based upon the systems they work on....
WinXPE Driver Integration (http://theoven.org/index.php?topic=2607.msg33871#msg33871)

Somewhere in the PESE Forum I posted the > PESE Driver Integration < version

Title: Re: Driver Pack
Post by: Malok on December 31, 2019, 05:51:58 PM

Hi James,

I added more than 240 wifi and lan drivers and corrected the errors in the current pack... it' has inflated to 900 MB boosting the boot.wim to reach 1.5 gb...

But all required Drivers loaded properly chipset, i2o, scsi, and raid etc. Then I read your last reply, And gave it a try. It woks well but it installs all drivers in the windows directory filling XPE Write filter with huge amount of inf and sys files, rendering The Drivers Hive a complete wreak (too much is too much I guess) so the results where not much better than integrating the whole bunch...

I was parsing different manuals of the utilities used in XPE Startup process and found in the pecmd doc that you can use the DEVI command to extract only needed drivers from a cabinet file and install them to Windows on the fly.

There are some restraints in the structure of the Cabinet file and I had a couple problems getting the file as it should. But I Found a Utility that works properly in the Very old stuff on the web.

I have split the pack in two, integrated directly chipset and mass storage drivers. Then Packed all network drivers in a file named Network.Cab that I put in the root of the iso file.

Then used DEVI $Y:\Network.cab in _SUB LoadDrivers of XPEStartup.ini... Recompiled and tadammmmm Bootwim back to 735mo.

The bad side, this have added a good 20 to 40 seconds to XPE boot time unfortunately, but the results are perfect DEVI added only missing drivers and my resulting  XPE had 120 inf added and processed without intervention... the good side to the bad side, is that it can be easily disabled when you don't need it.

I'm going to look in, if it is possible to create a cmd file that could run it on demand instead of auto running it. So this could be automatically launched just before PENM to add missing drivers.

And leave your PE free of unneeded drivers at boot time. I believe this method is good to use with all non boot dependent drivers and it also have a special syntax to deal with unorthodox driver installation.

I'm trying this route and will do different test to see the viability of the solution. and how expandable it is.

Thanks again James, Cheers !!




 

Title: Re: Driver Pack
Post by: sharp on January 13, 2020, 09:18:58 AM

Hi Malok,
May I have your driver database please :smile:

Title: Re: Driver Pack
Post by: Malok on January 13, 2020, 06:38:45 PM

Quote from: sharp on January 13, 2020, 09:18:58 AM

Hi Malok,
May I have your driver database please :smile:

Well I can tell you what I took to make them...

I took Video, Sound, Lan, Wlan,Chipset, Storage, from DPxPE_2019-07-07  and VIDEO_2016-12_XPE and all drivers from LanWlan_2017-03 on the following page

http://forum.ru-board.com/topic.cgi?forum=62&topic=24098&start=71&limit=1&m=1#1 (http://forum.ru-board.com/topic.cgi?forum=62&topic=24098&start=71&limit=1&m=1#1)

Then completed with Drivers from this Driver Packs https://drp.su/en/info/driverpack-offline.

Completely stripped all non Win10all and Win10x64 drivers.

And finally Added my required Raid and SCSI drivers For HP And Dell servers.

Takes a couple hours to, do but it worth it.

If you want a little more info read this post. http://theoven.org/index.php?topic=3023.msg36185#msg36185

Title: Re: Driver Pack
Post by: James on January 13, 2020, 07:05:50 PM

Just imagine how the response comes across, after spending hours, weeks, months and years on XPE Project..
But it is what it is, I guess...

Title: Re: Driver Pack
Post by: Malok on January 14, 2020, 02:11:24 AM

James,

Even if my English is pretty good. Sometimes your reply are so cryptic, I don't know what to make of them :confused: Loll...

I don't mind Sharing the packs I have made, if it's not against forum rules. But there is nothing special there. besides a lot of clicks.

Quote from: James on January 13, 2020, 07:05:50 PM

Just imagine how the response comes across,

I imagine, a good answer that force you to learn a bit and do a little homework to achieve your goal, is more instructive...

Quote from: James on January 13, 2020, 07:05:50 PM

after spending hours, weeks, months and years on XPE Project..

"Just a couple things more and it's done... I swear..." - MaloK