Windows Made Easy

The long-awaited tutorial is here - integrating drivers into your unattended Vista setup!

It’s a simple task, but first you need to read part 1 of this tutorial.

Since I have a nVidia system (motherboard and video card, sound… etc.) I will use those drivers as an example. You can use any drivers as long as they follow some rules (I will show you what I mean).

1. Go from step 1 to step 9 from part 1. Now you should have a basic understanding of how you can use WAIK.

2. Create a folder on your root drive, mine is C:\Drivers. Extract from your driver package (if it’s a zip or exe archive) all the files into C:\Drivers. My Forceware (video) drivers will be extracted to C:\Drivers\Forceware96.85, so I will end up with this:

Be careful! You MUST have driver-specific files, like .sy(s), .inf, .cat, .dl(l) and so on, NOT archives like .rar or .zip (the way you usually download them from the Internet).

If your driver comes as an .exe file only, and you can’t extract the files, try with WinRAR (worked for Forceware driver, which actually came as a single .exe file). If that doesn’t work, try to find some .zip files on the Internet matching your driver. Vista Setup will NOT install a .exe or a .zip driver, it looks for .inf files.

Repeat this for every driver you need to install, by creating a directory in C:\Drivers for each driver and extracting there the files.

As an example, I added nForce drivers for my motherboard: sound card, network card (and others), ending up with this folder structure:

I also renamed Forceware96.85 folder to Video, so it can be more obvious about what it contains.

C:\Drivers\AudioDrv contains:

C:\Drivers\Ethernet contains:

C:\Drivers\Video contains:

C:\Drivers\GART contains:

C:\Drivers\IDE contains:

C:\Drivers\MemCtl contains:

C:\Drivers\SMBus contains:

3. Now do the steps 11 -> 13 from part 1.

4. Copy directory C:\Drivers to C:\Mount\.

5. Do step 14 from from part 1.

6. Go to Components in Windows System Image Manager -> PnpCustomizationsNonWinPE -> DriverPaths and add PathAndCredentials to Pass 2 offlineServicing.

Add some string value to Key, like myDrivers and X:\Drivers to Path.

You must end up with this:

7. Continue with step 15 from from part 1 and it’s all done! Install your custom Vista and enjoy!