Managing the HII driver library

Overview

While adding, removing and updating drivers is relatively simple, there are some parts which can be confusing or cause problems. Some of these situations will be outlined below. Before continuing, Landesk has an introductory guide which explains the basics of the procedure. It can be found here: http://community.landesk.com/support/docs/DOC-7945

This article is mostly in reference to Dell drivers. While some of these may apply to other manufacturers, other manufacturers may package their drivers differently.

Using Dell's Driver Packs

For many of the more recent models, Dell offers a "Driver Pack" under the Systems Management section of that model's driver download page. This driver pack contains the extracted infs from each of the .exe packages greatly simplifying the process of adding drivers to the Landesk driver library. The drivers are organized by category type (communication, video, audio, etc) and within each category by Dell's internal naming conventions (R302424, R281187, etc). Compare these internal numbers to those listed on the details page for each executable to identify which piece of hardware the drivers correspond to.

No .inf files within the driver package

First, check to see if the driver you need is in the Driver Pack described above. Also, confirm that the package you are working with is indeed a driver and not listed as a Dell "utility" or "application". Try extracting the files from the driver using either 7zip or Universal Extractor. Also, run the installer with a /? or /help switch. Some Dell installers have command line switches to extract the drivers to a folder.

Multiple folders for a driver

Some Dell drivers come packaged in 2 or more folders. In most cases, both set of .inf and related files are necessary for the hardware to function properly. While you could add each folder separately to the driver library, this is messy and difficult to manage. Simply copy all the drivers from the other folders related to the same package.

For example, one of the Intel chipset drivers for the Latitude E6420s divides the drivers into 2 folders, called MEI and SOL. Copy the drivers from SOL and MEI into one folder and select that folder when adding the drivers through the console. Since all the necessary files for that driver are in that folder, they can now be added as a single item in the driver library.