Did you ever wonder what would be the required best practice steps on how to import new drivers in System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), when building a new hardware model. Well I try to explain the steps to accomplish this in a few sections . This section is Part 2 : Importing a driver into the SCCM Database.

Import a single Driver in the SCCM database

In this example we are importing drivers into the driver package for the “Lenovo R61”

First of all, download the latest drivers from the manufacturer’s website if new PC models are introduced.

It could be possible that some drivers are already present in the SCCM Database , so they will be denied to be imported again.

As this is no exact science and very difficult to predict when it happens, I will give you some guidelines in the next section.

We will now focus on drivers that weren’t known by the database before.

I. Extract the drivers and copy them into the “\\<Your Server>\Drivers\PC\_OriginalSources_\XP\<PC Model>” folder

II. Following procedure to import the drivers:

- Open your ConfigMgr Console

- Expand “Computer Management”

- Expand “Operating System Deployment”

- Expand “Drivers” in the left pane

- Expand “[PC]” in the left pane

- Right click on “Drivers” and Click on Import.

III. In the “Source Folder” , type in the UNC path to the folder where you have extracted your drivers for a specific type of hardware (e.a video, audio ,etc ).

IV. Click next when source folder is specified.

V. The Wizard will propose one or more drivers, select those you need and click “Categories”

VI. Add a new Category if it didn’t yet existed, add the driver to the category. Specify the category name for drivers, when finished click ok.

you MUST add the hardware type and the driver category if they do not exist already ! We will use this later for the ease of finding the drivers back thru search folders.

VII. Press “OK” and the following screen will appear

VIII. Click Next and the “Add driver to driver package” will appear. All the drivers will be imported later into the specific created driver package for the specified hardware model.

IX. Click Next and the “Add driver to boot images” will appear.

X. Click Next.

XI. Click “Next” and “Close” the wizard if the import was successfully ended .

This process will be needed for every driver that needs to be integrated in the OS deployment for a specific hardware model. This can be a time consuming task at the beginning of the deployment configuration. If an update on a driver is needed, it is the specific driver that can be easily located and updated on a central place in SCCM .

Be careful when uploading drivers , because Multiple Driver Delete  does NOT work .I think they forget to add this in the initial release ! However there is a script on MyITForum to multi delete drivers.

How to handle or import a duplicate or existing driver in the SCCM Database ?

In this example we try to import a duplicate(existing) driver into the SCCM driver database for the “Lenovo R61”

First of all, when importing the latest drivers from the manufacturer’s website when new PC models are introduced, it could happen that the driver is already in the SCCM driver database because of other hardware models using the same driver. When this is the case, they will be denied to be imported again.

As this is no exact science and very difficult to predict when it happens, I will give you some guidelines in this section.

I. When it happens, it shows you the following window below.

II. If you look closely ,it will tell you “The selected driver has already been imported at this site.”.This means we will have to look now in the database where it is.

III. By default you will not see the inf files in the view at the SCCM console. To perform this action , follow the steps below.

IV. Expand “Operating System Deployment”

V. Expand “Drivers” in the left pane

VI. Expand “[PC]” in the left pane

VII. Right click on “[PC]” and Click on “View” -> “Add/Remove columns..”.

VIII. In the next pane , remove the existing “Displayed columns” and add the new ones as shown below.

IX. Click “OK” to continue. You will now have the following view :

X. Now you could use the “Look For” field to allocate your driver in the database. If we look closer into the error that we earlier had , we could look for the inf file , in this example ( rimsptsk.inf )

XI. Now you fill in the “Look For” field the “rimsptsk.inf” and click “search”. The following results will show.

XII. Select the results and right click “Categories”

XIII. Add the “Categories” that refers to your hardware model and you are done.

For the Part 3 , I will show you on how to create a search folder to find your drivers back into the SCCM database !

Hope it Helps ,

Kenny Buntinx