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Recache Drivers and KBE Building

I am trying to wrap my head around some things having to do with drivers. 

1) What exactly does recaching do? Does it just update the list of drivers on the Drivers tab of the KACE web UI?

2) When building KBEs, how should I manage drivers if I want to build both PE3 and PE5 KBEs? For example, Dell says to delete old drivers from the Drivers share, but if I were to do that after making a PE3 KBE (in order to make a PE5 KBE), the driver list will contain drivers that no longer exist in the share.

3) Are the Dell Driver Packs incremental, or do they include all drivers from previous releases? I would assume (since Dell says to delete the old drivers before building a new KBE) that the driver packs contain all drivers, but given they are so small I find this hard to believe. 

Thank you,
Bob

1 Comment   [ + ] Show comment
  • Recache does update the driver database
    if you build both, clean out all drivers, install the PE3 driver bundle and the needed drivers, recache and build. Then clean out and repeat with PE5.

    the driver packs from the feed contain all drivers in the most current version for the package (so you may have newer drivers on the dell packe but not in the driver package) - Nico_K 8 years ago

Answers (2)

Posted by: cserrins 8 years ago
Red Belt
1
The main thing objective of recaching the drivers is for the K2 to parse those directories and capture the information into the "drivers" list page, you can view kbe drivers.  Steve is correct in that you don't really have to recache for drivers_postinstall, however, it is necessary for the drivers directory.
Posted by: SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
Red Belt
0
If you are placing the drivers in the kbe directories yourself and using the KBEM to build you kbe's I know from experience it does not really matter.  I have a folder on my desktop for the kbe drivers.  In it is are ones for pe3 and ones for pe5.  When I need to go back to build a pe3 kbe I go \\ikbox.tmcc.edu\drivers and delete the tmcc driver subdir on the kbox and replace with the older one I archived.  I build the kbe via the kbem and then put the never drivers back so I do not forget to do that later.

I have been trying to exclusively use pe5 even for my win7 images since I am deploying my wims via dism.

When you start using the internal programs/utilities on the k2000 (ie driver feed and Media manage) a valid driver table may make a difference.

Comments:
  • BTW the PE driver packs are tiny, they usually only contain network and necessary drivers for within the PE env only. - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
  • Wall of text ahead, but I would GREATLY appreciate your comment on the following as I try to learn this without any formal training:

    What would the the alternative to putting the drivers in the kbe directories manually?

    What do you mean by "using dism?" How does one go about doing that, and what is the difference between that and a) Using the Driver Feed, and b) using the Install Drivers VBS script in the Mid-Level Tasks

    Also, while we are on the topic, if you are using the Driver Feed, do you also need to include the Install Drivers mid-level task in the system image? It seems like when doing so there are two driver-related tasks in the task list and dism runs twice---the first time takes a while and the second time it zips right through

    One last thing: I have been using the Media Manager to build my KBEs (with the exception of one I built around MS DaRT and built with KBEM). Is there any disadvantage to using the Media Manager (that is, if you dont care to use the extra features of the KBEM)? - robcav 8 years ago
    • I use dism vs imagex to deploy my wims from windows shares placed through my network. I use my own version of the driver feed. I use autoit to create an exe that I run as a mid level task. All it does is copies the contents of a directory containing all the drivers needed for post imaging. I download the sccm driver pack for the machine I am targeting and run the install to expand that to a directory with all its sub dirs. I then zip them along with and autoit complied exe that copies the files to a directory under c:\windows\inf\tmccdrivers. I upload that zip as a mid level application, call the exe and my drivers are installed prior to post sysprep. when the machine begins it's post sysprep task it will find and use these drivers. - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
  • Also, what do you normally keep in your "tmcc" folder in the drivers share? - robcav 8 years ago
    • all the drivers needed for tmcc devices to allow win 3 and 5 pe booting for imaging. NIC, USB 3.0 some other misc drivers. - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago

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