Windows 7 / Getting Started

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OSD Building Blocks

There are many pieces in the ConfigMgr OSD feature that collectively come together to form a cohesive and comprehensive tool to deploy Windows in any environment. Knowing the ins and outs of these pieces, and how they fit together, is vital for using OSD to its fullest and best way possible for your organization's Windows deployment. The following sections describe each of these building blocks in detail in the order they appear in the console

Drivers

Using the Drivers node, you import drivers into the ConfigMgr drivers catalog. The deployment process uses this catalog to identify which drivers to copy to a system essentially injecting them into the OS deployed. Drivers injected into the process are not guaranteed to be used however. Windows setup still makes the ultimate decision of which drivers to actually install and use; however, for drivers to be available to the built-in driver tasks, they must be imported into ConfigMgr. The "Driver Management Section" has a complete discussion of using drivers during OSD.

Driver Categories

Categories are an optional classification tool used to track driver versions or separate and classify them in some other logical way that makes sense for your organization. Categories are used to filter which drivers are considered for installation during an OS deployment, but have no other specific function within ConfigMgr. Categories are assigned to drivers when you import them or by selecting one or more drivers displayed in the console and choosing Categorize from the ribbon bar or right-click context menu.

Drivers may have zero or more categories assigned to them. Adding drivers to multiple categories offers many advantages over simple hierarchical groups where drivers may be members of only a single group. This, combined with the new console filtering features, should be quite useful in environments with large driver repositories.

There are no default categories; the creation, definition, and use of all categories is completely up to you. Categories often are used to designate different hardware models or manufacturers. This enables you to limit the scope of drivers considered during the plugand- play detection done by the task sequence, speeding up the process and reducing or eliminating the chance that a bad driver is installed and used. Note that using categories for device type is redundant because a class attribute already exists for each driver that defines the type of device for which the driver is applicable.

Another popular use for categories is for version control and testing of new drivers. Assigning a distinct version number using a category enables you to prevent the use of these newer drivers for production deployments until they are tested.

Consider also using console folders in addition to or instead of using categories because your drivers are then visually grouped together and easy to select en masse.

Importing Drivers

To import drivers into the ConfigMgr driver catalog, perform these steps:

1. Copy the driver files you want to import to a UNC accessible location; consider this location an initial import location. Do not delete or rearrange the files in this location after importing the drivers because ConfigMgr maintains a reference to this original location for each imported driver; deleting or rearranging these files or folders causes issues because ConfigMgr directly uses these original files when creating boot images that reference these drivers and creating driver packages. Also, do not confuse this location with the driver package source location (discussed in the "Driver Packages" section). These should be two distinct locations.
   ConfigMgr can import only raw driver files, not compressed files, or executables. You must extract the files from these packages to import them.
2. Navigate to Software Library → Operating Systems → Drivers . Choose Import Driver from the ribbon bar or right-click context menu to launch the Import New Driver Wizard.
3. On the Locate Driver page, select the location you copied the driver files to in step 1. If you have only a single driver to import, choose the second radio button and then enter or browse to the exact UNC location of the .inf or txtsetup.oem file. For multiple drivers, or to allow ConfigMgr to auto-locate all available drivers in a given path including all subfolders, use the first option, Import all drivers in the following network path (UNC).
   At the bottom of the Locate Driver page, choose your desired behavior to handle duplicate drivers:
   • Import the driver and append a new category to the existing categories.
   • Import the driver and keep the existing categories.
   • Import the driver and overwrite the existing categories.
   • Do not import the driver.
4. If you selected the first option on the Locate Driver page to import all drivers from a specific location, the Driver Details page shown. All drivers found based on the location entered on the Locate Driver page are shown in a list box, where you can review the drivers and uncheck those that you do not want to import.
   If you selected to import only a specific driver on the Locate Driver page, a slightly different Driver Details page is shown with details about the specific driver chosen.
   By default, all selected drivers are enabled after they are imported. To disable this behavior, uncheck the Enable these drivers and allow computers to install them check box or the Enable this driver and allow computers to install it check box depending on which Driver Details page is shown. Use the Categories button at the bottom of this page to create and assign one or more categories to the drivers imported. If importing more than one driver, all drivers imported will have the selected categories assigned. Driver categories are further discussed in the "Driver Categories" section.
5. On the Applicability page, which is displayed only when importing a single specific driver, modify those platforms for which the driver is applicable. In general, the authors do not recommend modifying the applicability for imported drivers because this information is directly pulled from the driver's .inf file as defined by the driver's vendor.
6. On the Add Driver to Packages page, create or select an existing package to which to add the drivers being imported. Drivers must exist in a driver package (discussed next in the "Driver Packages" section) to be accessible and usable during OSD. You may add drivers to packages later if you have not decided on your driver package structure at this time. Clicking the New Package button displays the Create Driver Package dialog, also described in the next section.
7. The Add Driver to Boot Images page is the last significant page in this wizard. Choose which boot images to add the drivers to in addition to placing them into the driver repository and driver packages. See the "Drivers in Boot Images" section for a discussion of exactly which driver to include in your boot images.

All imported drivers appear at the root of the Drivers node in the console. As with most other objects in ConfigMgr, you can create subfolders to further organize your drivers; however, newly imported drivers always appear at the root. From there, you must move them by selecting them and choosing Move from the ribbon bar or right-click context menu.

To view the properties of a driver, select the driver; then choose Properties from the ribbon bar or right-click context menu. Here is what you can do from the driver's Properties dialog box:

• View (or change) the driver source location.
• Enable or disable a driver for consideration during the plug-and-play detection step in OSD.
• Modify platform applicability.
• View which driver packages or boot images a driver is part of.