Managing Driver Packages

Managing driver packages involves adding and removing packages from the driver store. Drivers can be staged in two ways:

• Online staging This involves adding driver packages to the driver store while Windows is running on the system. You can perform online staging of driver packages by using tools such as PnPutil.exe or the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) command-line tool. For more information about using PnPutil.exe, see the next section. For information about using the DISM tool, see the section titled "Using DISM. exe" later in this tutorial.
• Offline staging This involves adding driver packages to images for deploying Windows Vista with prestaged drivers needed by the targeted computer systems. You can perform offline staging of driver packages by using the DISM command-line tool or by using drag-and-drop operations with MDT 2010 to add driver packages to the Out-Of-Box Drivers folder under a deployment share in Deployment Workbench.

Note You can use the Out-Of-Box Drivers folder under a deployment share in the MDT 2010 Deployment Workbench only to deploy core device drivers. If you also need to deploy a supporting application (Setup.exe file) for a third-party driver, you need to package it and deploy it as an application in MDT 2010.