Pre-load Ethernet driver

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ajsgolf18

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  • #1
    We have a number of users who will be connecting their laptops to our docking stations in our office. Currently when they connect their laptop the Ethernet driver tied to that dock shows up as an exclamation mark in device manager. If we point it to the appropriate INF file it works without issue. We are trying to pre-load the driver on the user's laptop so when they connect their laptop to the docking station they don't have to manually point to the INF file in device manager.

    We want them to just plug their laptop to the dock and have it detect the Ethernet connection right away. I tried placing the folder containing the INF file for that specific Ethernet driver in the C:\Windows\INF folder but that did not work. Even tried a reboot while connected to the dock but when we signed back into the laptop it still showed the exclamation mark next to the Ethernet driver.

    Is there a way to have it look at that INF file without performing any manual steps on the laptop? Any kind of back end deployment would be fine, we just don't want the user to have to take any manual action on their laptop as it could be hundreds of users who need this to be performed on.
     
    Ardax

    Ardax

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  • #2
    ajsgolf18 said:
    Is there a way to have it look at that INF file without performing any manual steps on the laptop?
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    AFAIK, no. You can use pnputil.exe to add the driver to the system's driver store. You might even be able to cobble something together on a USB stick with an autorun.inf file to automate the process for users who have USB Autorun enabled.

    ajsgolf18 said:
    Any kind of back end deployment
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    I'm not 100% sure what you mean here if this is some kind of BYOD style setup.

    Edit: This assumes you're not deploying Windows to these devices or are lacking some sort of offline access to them. DISM can add drivers to offline systems and installation images.
     
    L

    Lord Evermore

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  • #3
    Do the docks not come with (or have available for download) a driver setup disc or executable to install all necessary drivers? If you're going to have access to the machine anyway to put the INF files into place, why couldn't you run the installer, especially given that you have to setup the machines initially anyway? Or are they BYOD laptops, in which case the users ought to be able to handle running a setup program one time? Do you have some super-freaky weird-ass docks that use a chipset Windows doesn't have built-in drivers for? That's almost unheard of these days. Does device manager say "could not load a driver for this device" or something? After you have the device working, does the network controller's properties show other files in the Driver Details? Just having an INF file doesn't do anything to provide the actual driver; when you point to the INF to install the driver, it's usually telling it what OTHER files need to be loaded. You need the entire package available when Windows looks to the INF file.

    You also don't even need to go into Device Manager to load the INF and the driver files. Just provide them with a copy of the package and tell them to right-click a particular INF file and select "install", or make a batch file that does it. You could even make your own setup program to do it, and have it all in a single exe file.
     
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