Driver Implementation Tips and Tricks for Application Packaging

Do you know any "Driver Implementation" pros?

Me neither.

Maybe that's why this info from Juice contributor Harsh is particularly useful. He's has pulled together some driver/packaging wisdom we can probably all benefit from.

To Repackage

To Repackage a driver-related application, the following things need to be checked.

1. Capture the driver related application. Analyze what are the driver related files and registries in MSI.
2. After analyzing the driver related resources, Check the source whether driver related exe is present or not. Most of the time you will find driver related ".exe" or ".msi" in the one of the source folder.
3. If you find such ".exe" or ".msi" then use the same file to implement Driver in your MSI Package. Write a Custom Action "Execute program from Installation" in Deffered Execution/Immediate execution with silent (-s, /quite, /silent etc.) option.
   
   

   Click to view.

4. If you can not find ".exe" or ".msi" from source then try to search for driver on Internet by name of company or name of driver for e.g Senitel Dongle Driver.
5. If you can not find Driver setup from Internet.Then again look for the driver related files (.INF, .Sys, .cat, .dll) in initial capture. If original application setup is implementing the driver using the ".INF, .sys, and .Cat" then most of the time you will get these files installed by application under “application folder\Driver" or Under "Windows\System32\Drivers" folder.
6. If you are able to find all driver related files mentioned in step 6 then use DIFx tool (Microsoft Tool having Custom Action to implement Driver). To use the DIFAx tool install the msi DriverInstallationTools.EXE
   1. To implement Driver using DIFx tool your driver should be signed Driver.
   2. To test whether driver can be implemented using DIFx, Copy the entire Driver related files and DPInst.exe, which is provided with DIFX tool in one folder. Then RUN DPInst.exe and it will show whether Driver is ready to use or Not. If you get message that Driver is “Ready to Use” then you can implement Driver with DIFx.
   3. To implement the Driver add a merge module DIFxApp.msm from the folder C:\DIFX\DIFxAPP after installing DriverInstallationTools.EXE
   4. If the table MsiDriverPackages is not present after adding merge module then add the table in the msi.In the component column of the table MsiDriverPackages set the name of the component that has the .inf file for installation of drivers. Set the flags to 0 (zero).
      
      

      Click to view.

7. For more Information for DIFx tool read the document provided with Tool.

Implementation of Drivers using .SYS files:

1. Some drivers are unsigned and do not have any .inf file for installation. In this case the drivers are implemented through .sys files.
2. These drivers can be seen in Device Manager by clicking show hidden drivers.
   
   

   Click to view.

3. Most of the times one can see the hidden drivers under non plug and play drivers tab.
   
   

   Click to view.

4. To implement these drivers within the MSI, use the registry values under
   

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<drivername>\*
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<drivername>\Security\*
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<drivername>\Parameters\*
   
   

   <drivername> in many cases will be the .sys file name.

Include these registries in the MSI. System needs reboot after installing the MSI. After reboot these drivers will get configured by themselves.

Example: To implement VPN-1 SecureClient Adapter, the registries that are included in the package are shown below:

Click to view.