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Tips and Tricks
Device Driver Installation
Plug and Play Drivers
PNP Driver - Install (First Time) |
This section deals with first time installs of the driver where there is
no existing driver on the computer.
Generally you install the drivers and then add the hardware and that is what
I have tested.
The Microsoft page at "MSDN KB #314479
"
contains more details.
I have discovered that Windows (tested WIN2000+) searches directories
listed in the registry at "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DevicePath".
The default value of this appears to be "%SystemRoot%\inf",
you can use the ";" (semi-colon) character to delimit
any directories you add.
See the "Registry Appending" section for an example
of how this can be done.
There is also a program called "SetDevicePath.exe" by Pyron which can
add to the device path.
There is a program called
"SetupCopyOEMInf.exe
"
which I think simply eliminates the need to add the driver source directory to
the registry entry mentioned above (apparently the registry entry has
a limit of 4096 characters).
I think it simply tells windows where to find the drivers.
The "DEVCON.EXE" may also be useful.
If its a printer driver perhaps the "Printer Driver Installation"
section is also relevant.
PNP Driver - Update Already Installed Driver |
I have successfully used the "DEVCON.EXE install" command
to update PNP drivers of an already installed device.
The command line is a bit cryptic.
The command is run from the directory containing the new drivers and you need
to look at the inf for the "device id", in my case it looked like "USB\...".
PNP Driver - Rescan Hardware |
Untested Possibilities for getting devices to pick up new
drivers (without rebooting):
- DEVCON.EXE /ReScan
- RunDll32.exe SysSetup.dll,UpdatePnpDeviceDrivers
I think the above is for the first time install and not an update, I have
found updates appear to be applied automatically after a reboot.