[wds] Driver packages in WDS

[mrbios]

In order for a machine to use drivers added into the drivers groups on WDS do you have to inject those drivers into the image you are using or will WDS automatically use them if they apply to the machine your imaging?

 

In order for WDS to boot into image discovery i had to inject the LAN driver into a boot image and that worked fine, now im playing around with the other functionality of it, i don't quite understand how the filters work unless there specificly just for searching for the drivers you want that you have added to your server?

[mrbios]

Seems i have answered my own question, got in this morning, pushed an image down to a machine i had added all the drivers into WDS for and it worked chuffed to bits with that

 

Now the bigger question is, does it find drivers from here on the fly or only during imaging? Say if i added a device to this PC that windows 7 didn't see a driver for, but that driver was in the WDS driver store list, would it pick that up?

[CaptainJack]

I have a question for you. Where did you inject the drivers? Did you inject them into the boot image that WDS uses to run the destination machine so it can drop the image down to the machine or did you inject them directly into the image file that comes down to the machine from the server? I have been beating my head against the monitor trying to figure out how to make this work. If I put it in the boot image, the machine doesn't see them, but I can't get them into the actual image that goes down to the server. So far everything I've read about this has such a convoluted explanation that it makes my head hurt.

[Gatt]

You inject them into the relevant boot image...

[CaptainJack]

You inject them into the relevant boot image...

 

Okay, now for the stupid question from across the pond...how? So far, I've tried mounting images -- nothing. Using the WDS console -- nothing. What am I doing wrong? Somewhere else on this site I saw someone ask why MS can't just have a menu option "inject drivers"?

[Gatt]

@CaptainJack - If you are running 2008 R2 then there are new options in WDS..

A Drivers Node wher you create packages with a list of drivers and what hardware they are for

Also, when you right click a BOOT image you can "Add Driver package to Image..."

 

This is only for R2 - if not then you need MDT or the WAIK...

[CaptainJack]

We're using 2k8 R2. I keep going back to Microsoft and they have nothing on 2k8 R2....or very little anyway. Most of their stuff on TechNet is related to Server 2k3. I know 2k8 hasn't been out that long, but you'd think there would be SOMETHING out there??? Guess I need to be the one to write it, huh?

[Gatt]

I'l try and put together a quick how to tomorrow...

[plexer]

I have to say I am enjoying driver injecting in MDT 2010 which is done as part of a task sequence.

 

Ben