I have released a new version of Driver Extractor that fixes a bug when the tool was used on Windows XP systems. It prevented the driver extraction on these systems which is now fixed.

Also it includes an additional handler for the PMQ file export for drivers which are missing required flags. This prevented an import into the XPe or WES2009 tools.

There was a small bug within the latest version that prevented the tool from exporting any driver. Please download the new fixed version.

I have added a new feature to Driver Extractor that allows you to export the device information of your current device to a PMQ file. The file format is identical to the TAP (Target Analyzer Probe) output.
Additionally I have added command line arguments so you can easily export all drivers from the command line.

These two features allow you to export the drivers for a specific system automatically so you can import them either into your Target Designer Component Database or Windows Embedded Standard 8 Catalog and use the exported PMQ file to automatically add the drivers to your image.

Arguments

DriverExtractor.exe [tap] [export] [wes8|xp|copy] [path <path>]

tap – will export the device information to devices.pmq in the current working directory. If path is specified it will be stored in this location.

export – will export all drivers in the format specified (wes8/xp/copy)

wes8 – Windows Embedded Standard 8 CTP1 Module

xp – XP Embedded / Windows Embedded Standard 2009 Component

copy – copy drivers only

path – specifies the output path

I have created a new version of my tool Driver Extractor which is now capable of creating Modules for Windows Embedded Standard 8 CTP1. The tool allows you to extract already installed drivers from your system with just a few clicks.
For the export you can also choose to package the driver into a Module (EMD) for Windows Embedded Standard 8 CTP1, a Component (SLD) for Windows XP Embedded & Windows Embedded Standard 2009 or you can just export the files.

The tool can be very helpful if you just have a system that has all the drivers pre-installed and you don’t have the driver CD at hand. It also saves you a lot of time because you don’t need to work with Module Designer or Component Designer to create your packages.

With the new version you can also import an INF file to create a component out of it – so the driver must not be installed on the system to extract it.

Also there are enhancements and bugfixes for the extraction routine.

Usage

Run the tool and select the devices of which you want to extract the drivers from.

Double-click a device to see which files are installed for the current device.

In the toolbar you can select the output format:

• Windows Embedded Standard 8 CTP1 Module (EMD)
• Windows XP Embedded / Windows Embedded Standard 2009 Component (SLD)
• Export only

Click the Export button and select an output directory.

This will export all drivers to the selected format in the specified output folder.

If you want to convert a driver to a module or component you can select File / Import INF and select the INF file of the driver.

Then again select an output folder. Driver Extractor will create the package there.

The new Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 enables you to manage all your embedded devices with a single tool.
This new tool integrates into Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and it not only allows you to deploy and update images – you can differentiate between device types. This way updates can be deployed, e.g. only to Thin Clients but not to kiosks however both device types run Windows Embedded Standard 7.

Another great feature is that Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 is able to control the write filters which might be enabled on your devices. Normally when a system has a write filter enabled and updates are applied the updates are gone again after a reboot – this is because the filter drivers redirect all changes made to the disk into a RAM overlay which gets reset on reboot.
When deploying updates via the Device Manager the system will handle this case properly by deactivating and reactivating the filter drivers automatically.

The tool works with all Windows Embedded Standard and Ready operating systems such as:

• Windows XP Embedded
• Windows Embedded Standard 2009
• Windows Embedded Standard 7
• Windows Embedded for Point of Service
• Windows Embedded POSReady 2009

and because it is based on System Center Configuration Manager 2007 it can handle all Windows Embedded Enterprise systems as well.

More information about the tool can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/evaluate/windows-embedded-device-manager.aspx

The Driver Injector tool allows you to find suitable drivers for your target device automatically. The tool can be a great help if you have previously extracted all driver with Driver Extractor and want to inject them again automatically. Or if you have a driver CD/DVD and want to inject all drivers automatically to the image without having to install every device manually. Driver Injector needs a Target Analyzer Output file which contains all the device information from the target device and a driver search path. Then the tool will find all matches and allows to inject them with one click.

Scenarios

Scenario #1

You have a bunch of drivers on the driver CD and need to install every driver one by one. In this case just run TAP to get the device information.

Then specify the driver search path – which is your driver CD. And click Next. Driver Injector will find the matching drivers and inject them to the image.

Scenario #2

Sometimes there are missing files but Windows will not tell you why.

When this happens you just open the INF file with the tool and it will show you all missing files.

How it works

1. Run TAP.exe from your Windows Embedded Toolkit
2. Run Driver Injector with Administrator permissions
   
3. Click Browse to select the “Target Analyzer Output (devices.pmq)” file
4. Click Browse and select a the directory which contains the drivers for you device
   Driver Injector will use all subdirectories automatically – it must not be a flat structure.
5. Select if you want to inject the drivers to the current running operating system (Online) or if you wish to inject the drivers to an image in a folder (offline).
6. Click Next
7. Driver Injector will now parse the devices.pmq file to get all the needed devices and it will parse all INF files for suitable drivers.
   
8. After the search has completed the tool will show a detailed list of devices which can be mapped with a driver.
   
   There are additional details which are being displayed for each device match:
   
   
   - [ExactMatch] means that the device driver is a 1:1 match with the device ID.
   - [CompatibleMatch] means that the device driver does not match the exact device ID – however it matches with one of its compatible IDs. Therefore it can be used without any problem.
   
   The second information within the brackets shows the hardware architecture of the device driver. You cannot select a device driver if the hardware architecture does not match the operating systems architecture.
9. Select all device drivers which you want to inject into your image. Driver Injector already preselected the best matches.
10. Click Next.
    
11. Driver Injector will now copy all the needed driver files to the appropriate directories.
    In case you have specified another Windows\inf directory as a search directory the directory will not contain the needed driver files. In this case Driver Injector will ask you if it should extract the drivers from installed Windows directory.
    Please note that this feature can not ensure that the correct files are being used. This is because some driver files are renamed during the installation process. It can happen during the extraction routine that some files are the wrong files because the source Windows directory had another device driver component installed which has the same filename (Example: hal.inf contains multiple hal.dll files. All of them are named hal.dll during the installation. However the original names are different from device to device, e.g. halacpi.dll, halapic.dll,…).
12. After the process has completed you will get a detailed summary.
    

 

Additional Features

Explore INF File

Driver Injector also allows to explore the content of an INF file. This feature will also display all missing files which are needed to install the driver properly. Missing files can happen on a Windows Embedded system in case not all components are installed but the driver depends on them. Missing files are being highlighted automatically by the tool.

How it works

1. Start Driver Injector and select “Explore INF File”.
   
2. Click “Next”.
3. Browse for the INF file which you would like to explore.
   
4. Driver Injector will now display all devices which are contained in the INF file.
   The tool will show all related files, registry entries, services and compatible IDs that are needed by a device.
   To display these items just expand the device node.
   The device items description shows additional information between brackets:
   - The first information shows the device ID – compatible IDs (if there are any) are shown in the Compatible node.
   - The second information shows the architecture of the device.
5. Highlighted items display missing but required files to install a device properly.
   

Add additional information during driver selection

During the driver selection screen you can also add additional information to the selected device.
For this just select the device and click “Load Details”. Drive Injector will then add information about files, registry entries and services that are installed by the device. It will also highlight missing files.

To explore the whole INF file of an selected device driver just click “Explore INF”. Driver Injector will the open a new window displaying the whole content of an inf file. For more information read the “Explore INF File” section.

 

Command Line Arguments

Driver Injector can run unattended with the following parameters:

DriverInjector.exe <devices.pmq> <DriverSearchPath> [OfflineImagePath]

If the [OfflineImagePath] is omitted then the current running OS will be modified.

 

Driver Injector can also be started to explore an INF file by using the following parameter:

DriverInjector.exe <INFFile.inf>

 

The free Microsoft utility Windows SteadyState can be used on Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems to prevent the OS from any changes.

It offers a write filter which will redirect all writes to a cache file which can be reset on a reboot. This will generate a fresh system on every boot.

Windows Updates can be installed even when the write protection is on. Additional security policies can be applied on the system using SteadyState.

Download a manual for the installation and configuration from our website

This video demonstrates you the usage of imagex together with either Windows Vista AIK or Windows 7 AIK.
A detailed command description can be found here.

The video shows the capturing of an installed “ready-to-clone” image where it will be saved to an external harddrive.
The second part will show the deployment to a fresh system where the target disk still needs to be prepared.

Driver Extractor is a tool which makes creating SLD components for drivers very easy.
All you need to do is to run the tool on the target machine with XP, Vista or Windows 7 and all device drivers installed.
Then you just need to select the devices for which the drivers should be exported into an SLD file and click export.
Driver Extractor will then copy all the needed files and creates a component for XPe/WES with Repository for you.
After importing the component to the database you can easily create your image.

Requirements

• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
• Windows Operating system with all needed device drivers installed
• WMI Support (if running on an embedded OS)
• Windows must be installed on C:\Windows in the current version

How To Use

1. Run DriverExtractor.exe on the target device. The Windows version should be XP as the exported drivers are taken from the current installation. If you use Vista it will take Vista driver which might not work under XP!
2. Check the devices for which you want to export the drivers.
   
3. Click Actions / Export Selected.
   
4. Choose an output directory. The tool will create a separate folder for each component named by the devices name.
   
5. Import the component (located in the output directory\Devicename\sld directory) into the Database by using the Component Database Manager
    
6. Add the component to your configuration

 

Description

Menus

File / End	Ends the program
Actions / Export Selected	Exports the drivers for the selected devices
Actions / Select All	Selects all devices
Actions / Deselect All	Deselects all devices
Actions / Refresh	Refreshes the device list
View / Files of selected device Contextmenu / Show Driver Files	Shows the needed driver files for the current selected device
View / Properties Contextmenu / Properties	Opens the Windows properties for the current selected device
? / About	Displays information about the tool

Toolbar

 

Refreshes the device list

  Shows the needed driver files for the current selected device

Exports the drivers for the selected devices

Opens the Windows properties for the current selected device

There are two ways how you can remove these messages in Windows.

1. Use Minlogon
  Minlogon will remove all the status messages and the logon window and logs the system on using the SYSTEM account.
  Normally this works fine but if you need to access domains this solution will not work for you.
  Also there are some other things (Cardspace,..) which will not work with Minlogon as it’s a minimum implementation of Windows Logon.

If you cannot use Minlogon you can go with the default Windows Logon and set the following Registry Key:

2. Windows Logon with hidden status windows

  Create the following registry entry in the runtime image or add the following key to your Target Designer Image Configuration:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"DisableStatusMessages"= dword:00000001

  After this key has been set all the status windows will disappear.