How to: Setup and configure initial HII Driver library, or setup HII for a new device make and model

Reviewed 7/30/2015

Problem

You are preparing to provision a new device model and need to setup HII driver detection.  Hardware Independent Imaging (HII) is an action you can add to a Provisioning template.  HII scans the target machine and identifies the hardware ID of all devices.  It then matches these hardware ID's to drivers in the HII driver library.  Once a match is made, the driver is copied to the device's hard drive and stored in the LD Driver Store (C:\Windows\lddriverstore).  HII then calls on DISM (if running in WinPE) or Windows API (If running in Windows) to actually install all the drivers.

HII allows you to use one OS image with multiple devices containing multiple hardware modules and still install appropriate drivers for each model.  It is important to note that HII does not actually install any drivers.  It's function is to first detect hardware IDs and match up drivers with matching Hardware IDs, and then copy said drivers into the driver store on the target device.  DISM or Windows API is relied upon to perform the actual installation.

Solution

In order to populate HII drop-down menus with the make and model for the new device, follow this article:

HII driver assignments: Device Make or Model is not showing up in HII

1. Run your provisioning template on the new device without including any HII action.  We want to see which devices are installed using default Windows drivers and which devices require HII drivers to install. 
   1. After the provisioning template runs and the device boots to Windows, look in Device Manager and identify the devices which are not installed.  There will probably be fewer devices than expected.
   2. Download drivers for these devices and manually install them.  Make a note if which drivers install successfully.
   3. On your core, copy these drivers into the HII library folders and rebuild the library:
      
      
   4. It is advisable to only add drivers to your HII library that are necessary for each make and model.  Adding unnecessary drivers increases the scan time when running HII and also could result in unexpected drivers being assigned
      1. Remember that HII matches drivers based on the Hardware ID.  Multiple drivers can have the same Hardware ID.  By keeping the HII library clean of unnecessary drivers we reduce the chance of an unexpected driver being matched and passed to the OS to install.
   5. Run your template again including HII actions.  In most cases all drivers will install properly.  If you identify that different drivers than expected are being installed, first determine if there is any effect to operation.  If the different drivers work fine, then there is no need to take further action.  If you do need a different driver to install, then go back to HII and assign that driver to the make, model and hardware device in question.

More Information

In your provisioning template, you can check a box to install unsigned drivers.  DISM is used to install unsigned drivers and DISM only runs during the WinPE pass of HII.  Unsigned drivers will not install during the Windows pass of HII:

Issue: Unsigned drivers not working in Hardware Independent Imaging (HII)

To add a driver to the HII driver store, you need the .inf file for the driver.  This is the file HII uses to populate the driver information.  Copy the .inf file and any other applicable files (.sys etc.) to the driver library.  If your driver is an .exe or other install package, try unpacking it with 7Zip or similar to locate the .inf file.  If no .inf is available for your hardware, you can create a software distribution package for the file and then assign this package in HII:

HII will only install Driver Packages during the Windows pass of HII.  It will not install driver packages during the WinPE pass.