Batch File to Automatically Install List of Drivers without User Interaction

Question

At work, one of the tasks I am responsible for is resetting computers to their factory settings and installing the updated drivers. Lenovo makes this easy with their System Update tool, but Dell and other companies require you to install drivers manually.

Because I am doing this process on so many machines, I am trying to find a way to automate the process so all I have to do is stick a USB in the machine, start a batch file, and let it go. Basically, I need a batch file that installs a bunch of drivers in a folder (that I download individually and put together first) without me needing to press "Ok" and "Next" for every single driver. I've tried a few things, but the /s or -s doesn't seem to be working. Does anybody have a workaround or know how to do this?

Here is the code that I have tried already:

pushd %~dp0
start /wait setup32.exe -s
echo press key when install finished!
pause
popd

Also tried:

@echo off
start /wait "" adobereader.exe /s /passive /quiet EULA_ACCEPT=YES

Nothing seems to work so far. For both of them, the driver installation starts, but it still requires user interactivity to continue the installation by pressing "Ok" and "Next".

Thank you for all of your help!

Solution 1

Richard as has been mentioned already you need an imaging solution. The free ones are WDS/MDT from Microsoft. However, it's up to you to research how they work to make your life easier as well as making yourself marketable for future positions. Now if you can't do those or your company doesn't want to then you could script this with pnputil command. It's made specially for drivers but you need to make sure you extract the drivers from the setup file. Dell offers *.cab files for their workstation series like precision. Search "dell cab drivers" and you can get a list of the computers they have drivers for.

Solution 2

I realize this question is fairly old but to assist others in their conundrums with this matter here it is; Dell has actually allowed the downloads of Driver Cab files, these files include all of the drivers for a Dell laptop of a specific model (for example the Latitude E6410). With these Cabs you can extract them to a USB Drive then create a simple Bat file to auto install drivers to the Windows Driver Store. As mentioned before this is particularly most relevant for Dell computers, but using this method I created a Windows Image that can be cloned to multiple models of Dell machines saving the need for multiple images. Life in short you download the Cabs for the models you are running, extract them into a directory, keeping the folders for separate models separate. Now in the root of the directory you just made create a Bat file. Write the Bat file like so:

@echo off&color a && Title [ MULTI .INF INSTALLER ]
::= Multi-PnP.Installer.cmd =
:: Put all Pnf, Infs, Cat, and Sys files etc. together in the same directory

:: Run Batch from current directory
cd %~dp0

:: Scan and Echo .inf files duing install
for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%a in ('dir /b /s /o:gen *.inf') do (
echo == Installing PnP Drivers == "%%a"

:: Delay
ping -n 4 localhost 1>nul

:: Windows Plug-n-Play Installer
start "" pnputil -i -a %%a
)
echo * DONE *
Echo.&Echo.&Echo.
echo == Reboot to finalize driver installs! ==&pause>nul
exit

This Bat will look into ALL directories inside of it's current folder for ANY PnP drivers. So please BE CAREFUL where you run this file. Depending on the number of models you have this may take some time. We use about 3 or 4 different Dell models so it takes us about 10-15 minutes for the script to complete. On a side note: Dell has also stated that some Blu Tooth drivers will not be included within the Driver Cabs so this is not 100% guaranteed to have EVERY driver you may be looking for.

Comments

[Mitch]

How are you imaging your machines?

[juggling_pro]

Using the installation CD's that the machines originally came in. I tried using the ghost image method to transfer the first machines image to the other machines, but when I used Symantec's software to do so, all I got was a black screen with a small white blinking line at the top when booting up.

[Mitch]

If you have access to volume licenses you should definitely be using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. It will handle all of the driver injection, etc. I don't think you can use it with OEM disks. How many machines are you imaging at a time?

[juggling_pro]

About 15 or so of each model. As far as I know I havn't heard about using Microsfot Deployment Toolkits, the OEM disks just take care of all of the activation codes for Windows, etc.

[juggling_pro]

Whats a good imaging tool you'd recommend? With Ghostcast not working, someone else recommended using Sysprep but I couldn't find any documents on how to capture an image and deploy it on a new machine. Could you provide some insight?

[raja]

Use MDT as Mitch mentioned- it can handle all the variations of driver installs. Activation however could be problematic if you are using the OEM vs MAK keys for activation.