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This describes the steps required to add Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)-supplied drivers to Windows installations. This article only includes drivers that are normally installed during graphical user interface (GUI)-mode Setup or post Setup by normal Plug and Play enumeration. This allows you to pre-load OEM Plug and Play drivers that you can use at a later time when the associated hardware is introduced in the system.


This describes how to add OEM Plug and Play drivers in the following situations:

- Unattended Setup
- Sysprep Setup
- Remote Installation Service (RIS) installations
- Riprep images
- Existing Windows installations

If you need to add OEM supplied mass-storage devices during text-mode Setup, please see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles:

Q220845 Adding Third-Party or Updated Driver During Windows XP Setup
Q225125 Limited OEM Driver Support with F6 During Windows XP Setup

Drivers that are installed during the "Installing Devices" portion of GUI-mode Setup have to be found in certain locations. At this point, Setup is installing the devices using Plug and Play IDs that have been enumerated by Windows Plug and Play. Setup searches a pre-defined path on the drive, looking in .inf files to find the best match for the Plug and Play ID of the device. This path is defined in the following registry location and is set to %SystemRoot%\Inf by default:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DevicePath: REG_EXPAND_SZ:%SystemRoot%\Inf

Setup uses this path to locate .inf files for device installation. After Setup, this path is also used for any new hardware found and installed. If you modify this key during Setup using the Sysprep.inf or Unattended answer file, the value is saved and is also used after Setup.