Automating Hardware Driver Installation on Windows 7 and Above

Automation is the key to our success. By using Group Policy, we can automate the deployment of software, settings, printers, drive mappings and pretty much anything else for our users and computers. For me, hardware has always been the item that didn't want to cooperautomate* Anytime users get new printers or scanners, we have to install the drivers. Most of these drivers come with bloatware and applications that simply are not needed. Windows Vista marked a change in hardware management. This management continues to get easier with Windows 7 and Windows 8. We can now automate driver deployment, driver updates, and hardware management. We can use these methods to automate hardware which makes our users happier and our jobs easier. In this guide, we will walk through setting a central storage area for drivers, populating that store, getting our clients to use that store, and allowing standard users to load specific drivers. As a real-world example, we will go through the driver installation, extraction, and deployment of a desktop scanner.