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Drivers on WinPE

It might be necessary to add additional drivers to a WinPE image, some missing drivers needed for a successful deployment are network and disk controller drivers. Network is needed to contact Host Provisioning Server and deploy the image, with the disk controller hard disks can be accessed. Most drivers are already included but you can find some network card or disk controller which is not detected, and need to be added.

Get Drivers

The Preparation Tool allows you to list third party drivers added to an existing WIM image.

Parameters needed:

PropertyDescription
-p, --WinPESourceRequired. Full path to the WinPE WIM image
-d, --DstFolderRequired. Temporary folder where the image will be mounted
-j, --IndexWinPESourceAn image can contain several images, set the index of the one you want to use, if not set index 1 will be used
-g, --GetDriversRequired. Get third party driver details

Example

HostProvisioningWinPE.exe --WinPESource C:\Temp\hps_winpe.wim --DstFolder C:\TempFolder --GetDrivers

Add Drivers

Place all the drivers you want to add in a folder (you can use subfolders), install only the minimum necessary drivers so the image unnecessary grows.

PropertyDescription
-p, --WinPESourceRequired. Full path to the WinPE WIM image
-d, --DstFolderRequired. Temporary folder where the image will be mounted
-j, --IndexWinPESourceAn image can contain several images, set the index of the one you want to use, if not set index 1 will be used
-a, --AddDriversInFolderRequired. Add drivers command specifying the folder where you placed them

Example

HostProvisioningWinPE.exe --WinPESource C:\Temp\hps_winpe.wim --DstFolder C:\TempFolder --AddDriversInFolder C:\NetworkDrivers

Temporary Inject a Driver

You can temporarily inject and test a driver in the Host Provisioning WinPE image, download the .INF driver and copy it to a USB key, follow these steps once Host Provisioning WinPE is started:

  • Press SHIFT+F10 to open a command prompt.
  • Insert the USB key and locate the drive where it is mounted, you can use DISKPART with the LIST VOLUME command.
  • Launch drvload.exe command with the path to the .INF file of the driver, for example: drvload.exe G:\network_driver.inf.
  • Relaunch the deployment program: X:\HostProvisioningDeployer\HostProvisioningDeployer.exe.