Realtek and Intel drivers - Disabling the stupid fancy driver screens

[googlemad]

I've just got a fully working Windows 7 image through SCCM, the only problem is those stupid Realtek and Intel GFX applications!

 

How can I get it so the Realtek rubbish doesn't pop up when someone plugs an audio device in and hides the tray icon, and how do I disable the rotation feature and tray icon for the Intel GFX via something like a registry push out in Group Policy?

[lostsoul]

I install just the drivers, and not the software. Can normally control everything you need natively in Windows.

[Duke5A]

Those system tray icons are just exe files placed in the run section of the registry. To automate it you can either write a script the runs on first logon to remove those registry values or you can edit the driver inf and remove the line that places the tray utility in the registry run section.

[Arthur]

I've just got a fully working Windows 7 image through SCCM, the only problem is those stupid Realtek and Intel GFX applications!

If you build your image in a VM you won't have this problem.

[Norphy]

Yes you will. Whether or not you build your machine using a VM or not, the Generalize section of Sysprep will remove all driver files when it gets run. The UI sections of the drivers get installed during the "Install Drivers" phase of the task sequence as they're included in the driver bundle.

 

Personally I use DCM to remove the Intel widget post deployment but I leave the Realtek one there.

[lostsoul]

You can stop Sysprep removing drivers by setting the following:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\Sysprep\Settings\sppnp set PersistAllDeviceInstalls to 1

[Norphy]

Yes but why would you want to? The whole point of a generalized image is to make sure that it can be put on anything. Keeping drivers in the image kind of stymies that.

[lostsoul]

But what if you're using something else to push your images out? not everyone has the luxury SCCM. Sometimes you might want to add several drivers to the image to make it work on different platforms. It's not elegant, but it works.

[Norphy]

You don't need SCCM to inject drivers into an image, WDS will do that on its own as will other deployment solutions. If the worst comes to the worst, you can script injection of drivers using DISM or PowerShell. And the OP is using SCCM.

[lostsoul]

I was simply pointing out that you could stop sysprep from removing drivers if you wanted to. Maybe it's not relevant to the OP, but it's useful to know. I don't see anything wrong with having an image with some drivers in it. In my mind the main function of /generalize is to remove the unique identifiers and make the image safe to deploy on multiple computers.

[googlemad]

I build all images in a VM, and don't even install the VM tools

 

What I did was went to the Stone website which has a handy driver finder and, for more recent machines, handily provide a pre built SCCM driver package. Linked that to the image and as I say it all works very well but the only manual intervention is the steps to disable the options for the sound and VGA which I could do via GP if I knew the exact registry keys! (I'll try blocking the Realtek EXE too but the VGA is still a problem when the little gits rotate half the screens in a classroom!)

[Duke5A]

You're really over thinking this.

 

reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /va /f

 

Run that as a first logon command in your answer file. It'll look something like this:

 

cmd /q /c reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /va /f

 

This will remove all entries from start up if you want to be lazy about it. For a more targeted approach use the same method, but call out the actual value names that launch the offending tray apps.