Hello everyone,

I am just joining and not completely sure how to explain what I am looking for so please be kind.

I work in a computer lab with approximately 100 computers. These computers are Optiplex 745, Optiplex 755, Optiplex 330, and Sfx 280. Currently I am imaging each of these computers and preparing to release a new image to each computer. As you can imagine it is quite a lengthy process due to the same updates and patches having to be applied to each image.

What I am curious about is if it is possible to take the drivers from each of those and combine it together on one machine, In theory trying to make a master image. Likewise, if I were to do something like this, how would the a computer use only its drivers and not attempt to use the drivers on another machine?

Any help is greatly appreciated and if any clarification is needed please feel free to ask questions.

Thanks!

I would imagine if the copies of windows are identical, with same updates and service packs, you should be able to combine the contents of
\windows\system
\windows\system32
\windows\system32\drivers
and
\windows\inf

all into one

you may have to use a third party bootutility to gain write priviledges to these directories, such as bart PE

Create a directory on your main image that contains all the driver installation folders (extracted) and include these paths in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DevicePath
When Sysprep is completing after your imaging process it will look in the paths you've included here for drivers to devices that have been enumerated by Windows.

I'm not familiar with the process myself but know much has been written / and tools to help with the task you're attempting. For one example, see here

In maintaining all these systems you might also find a tool like DriverMax helpful. If you should ever need to reinstall/use the same drivers on different machines you could do something like Export all the drivers on a machine into a folder you can put on a USB flash drive or a netwok drive.

Then simply reuse that folder holding all the needed drivers when installing the driver(s) on any other system that needs the same driver(s)

Thank you all for your responses so far. I apologize as well for not getting back here sooner. It is a busy week this week.

I will definitely check out drivermax. Currently, we have software that allows us to take an image or one can think of it as a snapshot of everything on the computer down to and including the bios.

The problem I am having is that all of the drivers for the different machines need to be able to function on one particular machine so that when I take the image of the machine and place that image on the others, the each machine needs to obtain and use its own set of drivers. I will definitely investigate that software and will continue posting on here with further questions as they arise.

Thank you all again.