Install drivers during the installation of Windows 11

Hello everyone,

I own a small computer shop and would like to install Windows drivers when installing Windows.

I would like my customers to create their own accounts when I give them their PCs.

Could you please mention whether there is a way I can do this?

Thank you

Check out this tool from fellow member and all-around good guy @hsehestedt

Thanks a lot for your reply.
I am gonna take a look at it... at least there is some hope as I could not find any answers anywhere else...

After 2 months of dealing with windows images, I’m well known in this forum as a crazy man who wants to customize windows installation. The best option is using NTLite. I recommend you buy the license to support the developer. Unfortunately, due to sanctions against Iran, I can’t buy it at the moment. But strongly recommend using this tool to create custom images with updates, drivers, custom settings, custom services and many other options. The free version which I have used is also an awesome one. As I can guess, NTLite uses DISM.

But if you don’t want to use NTLite, you should use DISM to manually integrate everything into the image. Many tools like UUPDump use DISM commands to create an updated image with your own drivers.

I had installed windows and drivers so I exported .inf drivers and integrated them to my image. If manufacturers provide driver installers you can extract .inf drivers from the installation package and integrate them. Also you can do what I did, I created silent installers of my driver installers and integrated them with NTLite to install.wim, so whenever I install windows, utilities also get installed before first setup (known as OOBE)

Dear Sheikh,
Thank you for your reply.

I would be willing to purchase paid software to support the developers. However, I noticed that some of the drivers provided by Asrock, for example, are .exe files. Would it be possible to install these drivers via NTLite during installation?

If you preinstall Windows on their machines, you could press CTRL+SHIFT+F3 to bypass the OOBE screen and temporarily login with the built-in Administrator account (aka enter Audit mode). You can install any drivers and free apps and shutdown. Next time the computer is powered on it will show again the OOBE screen to create a user account with the difference it won't need any drivers. If you sell many computers with the same hardware, you can do that once, then keep a backup of the disk and simply restore it on the new systems instead of installing Windows again. You can then enter Audit mode once more to change the Windows key before selling to the customer.

mss said:

I own a small computer shop and would like to install Windows drivers when installing Windows.

Click to expand...

The way that OEMs install their custom drivers and utilities in Windows 10/11 is by creating a provisioning package. A provisioning package allows the OEM customisations to be reinstalled should you ever need to reset Windows. It is also included when including system files on a recovery drive - turning it into a custom OEM factory reset drive for a clean install.

....this tutorial shows you how to customise the reset and recovery drive by saving your currently installed software applications, so that they get picked up by the reset process or the next time you create a recovery drive.

Windows 10 incorporates a new technology called Provisioning Packages, and this tutorial uses tool called scanstate, which is part of the free Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) to capture currently-installed software into one of these packages.

Click to expand...

spapakons said:

If you preinstall Windows on their machines, you could press CTRL+SHIFT+F3 to bypass the OOBE screen and temporarily login with the built-in Administrator account (aka enter Audit mode). You can install any drivers and free apps and shutdown. Next time the computer is powered on it will show again the OOBE screen to create a user account with the difference it won't need any drivers. If you sell many computers with the same hardware, you can do that once, then keep a backup of the disk and simply restore it on the new systems instead of installing Windows again. You can then enter Audit mode once more to change the Windows key before selling to the customer.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply.

I believe this would be the best option for me. As I mentioned, I don't mind purchasing software to do this; however, as I am selling the same hardware, the method you mentioned would be best.

Which method would you recommend for restoring the backup?

Bree said:

The way that OEMs install their custom drivers and utilities in Windows 10/11 is by creating a provisioning package. A provisioning package allows the OEM customisations to be reinstalled should you ever need to reset Windows. It is also included when including system files on a recovery drive - turning it into a custom OEM factory reset drive for a clean install.

Create Provisioning Package in Windows 10

Create Custom Provisioning Package used to Reset Windows 10 or Create Recovery Drive

www.tenforums.com

Click to expand...

This what I need for an ultimate solution, but I think I would need to invest a bit more time and learn more about the provisioning packages.

Thank you

In this informative video, i will guide you through the process of adding device drivers to your Windows installation. Join me as we explore step-by-step methods to seamlessly integrate drivers into your Windows setup, ensuring your hardware functions flawlessly.

In the mean time, why not set up a user account with the customer's email address and chosen username?

mss said:

Thank you for your reply.

I believe this would be the best option for me. As I mentioned, I don't mind purchasing software to do this; however, as I am selling the same hardware, the method you mentioned would be best.

Which method would you recommend for restoring the backup?

Click to expand...

In the 2000's in the shop I worked we used Norton Ghost to create a clone on a master HDD and then a special "duplicator" device that we could connect up to 4 IDE disks (yes, that old) and clone the master disk to the targets. Today there are alternatives, such as Acronis True Image or Macrium Reflect. Most applications can either clone directly, to produce a ready to use copy, or can create a disk backup (files) that can be restored to other disks for use. If you have a large enough disk, you can hold many backups for different hardware configurations and restore the appropriate backup on the target disk. Also as long as the partitions fit on the target disk, it can be smaller than the original, such as cloning a mechanical HDD on a smaller SSD. A typical fresh Windows installation with only drivers and a couple of applications should fit on a few GB and quick to restore.

PS: To avoid asking your customers sensitive information such as their Microsoft account details, you can create a local user called User or Owner in all systems and let them convert it to Microsoft or create another account as they like. Most of them will happily use that local user as not anyone has the appropriate knowledge to mess with accounts or even cares.

I was going to suggest Audit mode as spapakons already did.
When in Audit mode, you're in control as system Administrator. You install drivers or programs and customize Windows. You then exit Audit mode and shutdown. Next time you boot you will be back to OOBE to create a new user.

(Text and images below were taken from Kari tutorial Relocate Users )
1. Begin the Windows 11 installation
2. When installation reaches the Region Selection screen after reboot press CTRL + SHIFT + F3:


Windows reboots now entering a so called Audit Mode using the built-in administrator account. When Windows Desktop will be shown you'll notice the System Preparation Tool dialog in the middle of your screen. Close it for now by pressing the Cancel button:




Now you're in Audit mode.

Install drivers or programs and customize Windows as you like.

When done, restart windows. It will take you back to the screen above.
Shutdown options: Shutdown
Select OK
Next time you boot it will take you to OOBE, where you create the new User profile

If you have many computers with same hardware you can create a drive image (all partitions) and then clone the image to the other computers.
Most of us use Macrium Reflect or Aomei backuper or EaseUS todo to create the drive images.

If I may make some suggestions:

Item 1: If you plan to add drivers to Windows installation media, don't forget about boot critical drivers. Boot critical drivers are drivers that are needed by Windows setup to install Windows and are separate from the drivers that you inject into the install.wim file. The boot critical drivers are installed in the boot.wim index #2 which is used for Windows setup. As an example, you may need to add drivers to access the disks in your system or for laptops it is common for the touch pad not to work during windows setup.

Item 2: Injecting windows drivers into your windows installation media is certainly something that you can do but typically I would only be doing that for machines that I own myself. Since you are running a computer repair shop you're going to come across machines that have vastly varied driver sets. Rather than creating a one-off windows installer for every system that you come across there's another method that I think would be far easier. Since you are running a computer repair shop my assumption would be that when you are done with the system it's going to be in working order with all the drivers installed. Once the system is working and all drivers are installed and working properly you can simply export all of the drivers using a single command like this:

pnputil /export-driver * D:\Drivers_Backup

Substitute any location you wish for D:\Drivers_Backup. Note that this folder must already exist when you run the command. If it does not make sure to create that folder first.

Now if the user ever needs to reinstall windows from scratch, they would simply reinstall windows as normal and then afterward open device manager, go to the top of the device tree, right click their computer name, and choose the option to add drivers. Then just point it to the drivers that you saved using the command above. This will reinstall all system drivers. It may take a few minutes to finish and the screen may flash or go blank briefly while the display driver is being installed. This is normal and expected behavior.

As for boot critical drivers you can handle those very easily as well. Simply create a folder on the root your windows installation media by the name of $WinPEDriver$ and place the boot critical drivers into subfolders within that folder. Note that any drivers you place in this location must have their .INF files available. In other words, the driver(s) needs to be extracted and not in the form of a .exe, .cab or other packaged format.

This should be a whole lot easier than creating a custom Windows installation for every single user. Another advantage of this method is that it will continue to work with new versions of windows. If you customize a windows installation for the user, say for example using 24H2 then this disk would need to be rebuilt when 25H2 comes out. Whereas if you are simply placing the files on your windows installation media as I suggested above, this process will continue to work when new versions of Windows are released.

Note: If you want to automate the installation of the entire driver set rather than going into device manager you can simply run the following command to install all of the drivers:

pnputil /add-driver D:\Drivers_Backup\*.inf /subdirs /install

Coming back for a moment to the utilities that will let you inject drivers into a windows image, I can't speak for most of those utilities since I haven't used all of them, but I can obviously speak for the one that I wrote. If you did want to try that utility let me know and I can provide you a step-by-step set of instructions for injecting the drivers into your windows image. Also, if you want to know how to do this manually by simply running all of the commands necessary to inject drivers I can provide you instructions for doing that as well. While the manual method might be great for learning how to do it, I would discourage using it on a regular basis simply because of the sheer number of commands needed. It's very easy to make a mistake doing it manually and it takes a lot of time to run all those commands manually. You could combine them all into a batch file but you may find that you end up having to modify the batch file every time you use it.

If you need any further help just shout. This is the stuff that I do every day so I'm only too happy to help if I can.

kelper said:

In the mean time, why not set up a user account with the customer's email address and chosen username?

Click to expand...

We sell devices like mini PCs, so we don't have time to set up a PC for each customer. For the privacy and security of our customers, we do not create local accounts for them. We believe customers should have the option to create their own account on their PC.

The OEM solution is the best, but it requires some tinkering and time.

Currently, I think the solutions from @spapakons and @Megahertz are the best for us.

Thanks a lot for your support. I'm sure I'll have more questions and will definitely come back to you.

First off, thank you @mss for this thread. The current Windows ISO doesn't have my WiFi drivers so I have to manually install them during OOBE in order to continue. I've been debating on different methods to inject them into the ISO and the discussion here has been helpful.

Secondly, I have a question for @hsehestedt -- could I use pnputil to extract the current installed drivers and just copy that folder hierarchy over to $WinPEDriver$ and have the entire driver package installed during OOBE?

mss said:

I would be willing to purchase paid software to support the developers. However, I noticed that some of the drivers provided by Asrock, for example, are .exe files. Would it be possible to install these drivers via NTLite during installation?

Click to expand...

Some driver installers are more friendly, they can be extracted using 7-Zip/WinZip or provide a built-in command line to save in a folder.
Other installers are unfriendly and require you to execute them.

NTLite can had both cases, it can import driver files from an extracted folder, or execute the installer EXE from Post-Setup.

Bree said:

The way that OEMs install their custom drivers and utilities in Windows 10/11 is by creating a provisioning package. A provisioning package allows the OEM customisations to be reinstalled should you ever need to reset Windows. It is also included when including system files on a recovery drive - turning it into a custom OEM factory reset drive for a clean install.

Click to expand...

Provisioning packages (PPKG) are used by OEM's or large IT orgs, but it's a bit of a stretch for a small PC shop. You can certainly learn how to create one using the WCID tool, but will you be spending too much time on custom solutions when your customers might have different brand/model PCs?

PPKG's have less flexibility because you have build a new one, just to change the contents.

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You should look into NTLite, simply because it does most of what you want and as a small shop, your time is valuable. It's GUI-based so navigation and ease of checking what you're about to apply to the install image is really handy if you're expected to do this often.

A typical solution is to build a generic base ISO, downloaded from MS, and where you use NTLite's licensed download feature to automatically pull the monthly updates and apply them. Then for each customer (or brand/model), you can load the reference copy, add their drivers as extracted files or add the installers in Post-Setup. If you would like automate some portions using Unattended mode, that can be done. To avoid the requirement for a MS Account, NTLite can insert the BypassNRO reg value into the image.

If you like to pre-install free apps or utilites for them, this can be done from Post-Setup mode.

Since NTLite is preset (template)-based, you can create multiple presets. Whenever one of the OEM's updates their drivers, you can change a preset or create a new one if the customer has particular needs.

In the end, as a business owner, your time is money.

Taliseian said:

could I use pnputil to extract the current installed drivers and just copy that folder hierarchy over to $WinPEDriver$ and have the entire driver package installed during OOBE?

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, no. Some of the drivers are simply not suitable to use with Windows setup and may cause setup to fail.

If I were setting up a computer for a novice friend, I would install Windows with a local account and set the password to '*********', but tell them what it was.
When setting up a new installation with a local account, the user name could be John Smith. The folder in C:\Users would then be John Smith. The only downside with having a space in the name would be that the path in any script would need to be enclosed in quotes.

mss said:

Dear Sheikh,
Thank you for your reply.

I would be willing to purchase paid software to support the developers. However, I noticed that some of the drivers provided by Asrock, for example, are .exe files. Would it be possible to install these drivers via NTLite during installation?

Click to expand...

You're welcome.
Not all setups but most of them can be extracted with 7-zip which is able to extract .exe files too. but this method gives you .inf drivers only which are not enough. you can integrate these inf files easily with DISM or any other tools like NTLite which uses DISM method.
NTLite has an option to add .exe and .msi files to windows image in post-setup page.

if I had a business like you, I would do these steps:
1- Download 26100.1 version of Windows 11 with UUPDump and save it in a folder named "base iso".
2- use NTLite every month to integrate latest updates and settings to your base iso. name it "updated iso".
3- add inf drivers and utilities (exe, msi, ...) to updated iso for each hardware. now you have a "custom iso" for that specific hardware.

if you don't want to update it manually you can use this link to download MSDN updated isos. but you have to use a DISM based tool to integrate drivers and utilities.