Driver packs

One golden image across a qualified hardware fleet — drivers meet the machine at deploy time.

There are two separate driver stories in ImageForge, solving two different problems:

1. Driver packs in the Forge (for deployed Windows)

Upload a ZIP of driver folders (.inf/.sys/.cat) in the console's drivers view and scope it with model match rules. During deploy, the client reads the target's SMBIOS model string and injects every pack whose rules match — before first boot, into the applied image. One golden image stays clean; hardware-specific drivers arrive only on the hardware that needs them.

• Match rules are case-insensitive substrings of the model: Latitude 74 matches Latitude 7420 and 7480.
• * matches every machine — use it for universal packs.
• Vendor "driver cab" downloads (Dell/HP/Lenovo publish per-model cabs) extract into exactly the folder-of-INFs shape a pack ZIP wants.
• Injection failures are non-fatal; the machine still boots and the miss is logged.

2. Drivers in the boot media (for WinPE itself)

The boot client needs its own NIC/storage drivers before it can reach the Forge. Production media uses a small signed bootstrap set inside boot.wim and a larger signed depot outside the WIM at \ImageForge\BootDrivers\<amd64|arm64>. When a device is missing, the client records its hardware/compatible IDs and attempts only exact INF matches from the local depot. After a successful drvload, it rescans PnP, initializes WinPE networking again, and renews DHCP. Only then does it try the installed Windows DriverStore as a last-chance source. PXE releases also embed the depot in their WIM: an offline PE NIC cannot download the driver it needs to become online.

Testing in a VM

A virtual NIC has no driver in Windows itself, so it needs the same depot treatment as real hardware. VMware's VMXNET3 adapter is covered by the amd64 depot. VMware Workstation's actual default for a new Windows guest is E1000E (emulating a real Intel 82574 chip) — not vmxnet3 — and that one isn't covered yet. If a VMware VM boots the media but reports no network adapter, switch the VM's network adapter type to VMXNET3 (Workstation: VM Settings > Network Adapter > Adapter Type; ESXi/vSphere: Edit Settings > Network adapter) rather than assuming the media is broken.

Diagnosing a machine that won't network

The client's diagnostics view shows every physical network device and its state — including devices with no driver at all (these have no device class, which hides them from naive listings). The connect screen distinguishes the three cases for you: