Well we've been fiddling with our task sequence for a while now and can deploy a machine from an image, however as this is in a test environment we've been deploying to VMs and so have not had to deal with the thorny issue of drivers - but now is the time! I've done a fair amount of searching but most articles and blogs I've found talk only about MDT on its own rather than MDT integrated with SCCM so need a few very basic pointers to get me started. - Am I correct in thinking driver management will take place entirely through SCCM console and not the MDT workbench? - In SCCM under the OSD section there are "Drivers" and "Driver Packages" containers. I'm not sure why you need both as you seem to be able to create driver packages straight from a source, why do you need to import your drivers in to the Drivers container? - What is the highlevel sequence of events for adding drivers to an image? Is it as simple as creating Driver Package in SCCM console and then adding package to the Task Sequence Thank you

hi Tyler, - Am I correct in thinking driver management will take place entirely through SCCM console and not the MDT workbench? yes you are. you will do all your driver management in the SCCM console. - In SCCM under the OSD section there are "Drivers" and "Driver Packages" containers. I'm not sure why you need both as you seem to be able to create driver packages straight from a source, why do you need to import your drivers in to the Drivers container? drivers have to be delivered somehow, the somehow is the driver package which can contain one or more drivers (Frequently many drivers such as the dell driver CAB files) - What is the highlevel sequence of events for adding drivers to an image? Is it as simple as creating Driver Package in SCCM console and then adding package to the Task Sequence there are many ways but roughly something like this import drivers, add them to a category, add those imported drivers to a driver package, distribute the driver package to your distribution points, create a task sequence and add a step (or steps) which uses the Apply Driver Package, in that step select the driver package you just created and bob's your uncle you can even target drivers to specific hardware using wmi queries like so, there are plenty of ways of doing this, and plenty of excellent posts about the subject, i'm quite sure the others will chime in soon enough but hopefully this is enough to get you started cheers niall My step by step SCCM Guides I'm on Twitter > ncbrady

Thanks once again Nial. I can see the need for driver packages but am still a bit confused as to why drivers need to be imported into the the Drivers container in SCCM when it looks to me like driver packages can be created directly from any location rather than an SCCM secific location (i.e. the "Drivers" container). Is it just for convenience or have I missed something out of the process? You mention CAB files, presumably then SCCM is clever enpugh to deal with these type of thing without having to somehow unpack them, does this apply to any other file types (e.g. .exe?)

Driver packares simply put the drivers in your driver store on the Distribution Points. You can also create a driver package that points to a source foldre already containing drivers, and configmgr will distribute those for you. You will still need to import any drivers into ConfigMgr that you want to inject into your boot images. I have a ton of posts on Driver Management on my blog: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/cnackers/archive/tags/Driver+Management/default.aspx I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. There are MANY ways to do drivers, and you ultimately have to choose the best one that works for you and your business. I would highly recommend you read the info in the following 2 posts, as it's a good summary of the main methods for driver management: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/cnackers/archive/2010/04/29/configmgr-driver-management-good-info-to-read.aspx http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/cnackers/archive/2010/04/09/configuration-manager-2007-r2-sp2-driver-management.aspx MCTS: ConfigMgr, MDT / http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/cnackers/default.aspx

Michael Niehaus from the MDT team has written a blog article on an important hotfix for the driver import wizard in ConfigMgr Sp2. Good news for anyone importing drivers and using the per model "Apply Driver Package" method like me :-). http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2010/10/15/configmgr-driver-management-a-new-development.aspx I haven't tested it yet but it does seem to address the issues with duplicate driver import. It will not import the duplicate drivers, but will now add them to the new driver package rather than ignoring them completely which is the current behaviour. For anyone just starting to set up their OSD solution it is a real benefit and might influence how you decide to manage the drivers folder structure. You can avoid the "text file" method of forcing SCCM to import duplicate drivers and reduce the bloat in the site DB. However if you have an existing solution with the drivers folder split by make/model with duplicate drivers in each folder (eg. using the "text file" method) then you may still want to continue with that, until you have the opportunity to delete all of your drivers and create new packages. Mark.