Win 10 driver installs are intermittent

[doestreicher]

I created a Windows 10 image. I put drivers for our current HP desktop and HP laptop model in C:\drivers. In the answer file it has the drivers path set for c:\drivers.

Here is the weird thing. We have tested the image on a number of machines of the exact same hardware and on some the process will install all the drivers properly and on some it has unknown drivers or basic video drivers. We have tried letting the machine sit for awhile or doing a few more reboots to see if it would pick them up and it usually does not. We can right click on the unknown or wrong driver and have it search and it installs it but that is extra manual work and is weird since it sometimes adds them all.

Any ideas? I have no idea why some are doing it and some are not.

Thank you

[sudburr]

One reason why I don’t let Windows decide when to install drivers.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
    <settings pass="specialize">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Deployment" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <ExtendOSPartition>
                <Extend>true</Extend>
            </ExtendOSPartition>
            <RunSynchronous>
                <RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <Order>1</Order>
                    <Description>Driver Installation Pass 1 of 3</Description>
                    <Path>"C:\temp\drivers\dpinst.exe" /path "C:\temp\drivers" /q /se</Path>
                </RunSynchronousCommand>
                <RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <Order>2</Order>
                    <Description>Driver Installation Pass 2 of 3</Description>
                    <Path>"C:\temp\drivers\dpinst.exe" /path "C:\temp\drivers" /q /se</Path>
                </RunSynchronousCommand>
                <RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <Order>3</Order>
                    <Description>Driver Installation Pass 3 of 3</Description>
                    <Path>"C:\temp\drivers\dpinst.exe" /path "C:\temp\drivers" /q /se</Path>
                </RunSynchronousCommand>
            </RunSynchronous>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <cpi:offlineImage cpi:source="wim:c:/temp/v1709/sources/install.wim#Windows 10 Pro" xmlns:cpi="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:cpi" />
</unattend>

[doestreicher]

That was exactly what I needed! After doing this we reimaged a number of computers and they had all the drivers each time.

The only trick was finding the dpinst.exe. Since MS removed it from the newer Windows 10 driver kits you have to get it from the Windows 8.1 driver kit.

Thank you for sharing

[sudburr]

Glad it helped.

dpinst.exe was last included with the Microsoft Windows Driver Kit 10.0.10586.0 (v1507) build 10.0.26639.

To install:

wdksetup.exe /quiet /features OptionId.WindowsDriverKitComplete

Then find the dpinst.exe files here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\redist\DIFx\dpinst\EngMui\x64\dpinst.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\redist\DIFx\dpinst\EngMui\x86\dpinst.exe