Specify the Device Driver Application as Part of a Task Sequence

The first method for adding a device driver application to the deployment process is to use a task sequence to add steps for each device driver application.

There are two main approaches for managing device driver applications in the task sequence:

· Create a new task sequence group for each hardware model, and then add a query to run that group of actions if the computer matches a specific hardware type.

· Create a task sequence group for hardware-specific applications, and then add queries for each task sequence action so that each task sequence step is evaluated against the hardware type and will run only if a match is found.

To create a new task sequence group for each type of hardware

1. Click Start, and then point to All Programs. Point to Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and then click Deployment Workbench.

2. In the Deployment Workbench console tree, go to Deployment Workbench/Deployment Shares/deployment_share/Task Sequences (where deployment_share is the name of the deployment share to configure).

3. In the details pane, click task_sequence (where task_sequence is the deployment task sequence that will be required to install the device driver application).

4. In the Actions pane, click Properties.

5. In the task_sequence Properties dialog box, on the Task Sequence tab, in the details pane, go to State Restore/Windows Update (Pre-Application Installation).

6. On the Task Sequence tab, click Add, and then click New Group.

This creates a new task sequence group in the task sequence. Use this new task sequence group to create the steps for installing the hardware-specific device driver applications.

7. In the details pane, click New Group.

8. On the Properties tab, in the Name box, type group_name (where group_name is the name of the group; for example, Hardware Specific Applications – Dell Computer Corporation).

9. On the Options tab, click Add, and then click Query WMI.

10. In the Task Sequence WMI Condition dialog box, type the following details:

· In the WMI namespace box, type root\cimv2.

· In the WQL query box, type a WMI Query Language (WQL) query using the Win32_ComputerSystem class to ensure that the application is installed only for a specific application type—for example:

Select * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE Model LIKE %hardware_model% AND Manufacturer LIKE %hardware_manufacturer%

In this example, hardware_model is the name of the computer model (such as Latitude D620) and hardware_manufacturer is the name of the computer make (such as Dell Corporation).

The % symbol is a wildcard character that is included in the names to allow administrators to return any computer models or manufactures that contains the value specified for hardware_model or hardware_manufacturer.

For more information about WMI and WQL queries, see the section, Add WMI Queries to Task Sequence Step Conditions, in the MDT document Using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and see Querying with WQL.

11. Click OK to submit the query, and then click OK to submit changes to the task sequence.

Note This process must be repeated for each hardware type of each device driver application to be installed.

After the hardware-specific task sequence groups have been created, device driver applications can be added to each group.

To add device driver applications to hardware-specific task sequence groups

1. Click Start, and then point to All Programs. Point to Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and then click Deployment Workbench.

2. In the Deployment Workbench console tree, go to Deployment Workbench/Deployment Shares/deployment_share/Task Sequences (where deployment_share is the name of the deployment share to configure).

3. In the details pane, click task_sequence (where task_sequence is the deployment task sequence that will be required to install the device driver application).

4. In the Actions pane, click Properties.

5. In the task_sequence Properties dialog box, click the Task Sequence tab.

6. In the details pane, go to State Restore/hardware_specific_group (where hardware_specific_group is the name of the hardware-specific group where the task sequence step will be added to install the device driver application).

7. On the Task Sequence tab, click Add, click General, and then click Install Application.

The Install Application task sequence step appears in the details pane.

8. In the details pane, click Install Application.

9. On the Properties tab, click Install a single application, and in the Application to install list, select hardware_application (where hardware_application is the application for installing the hardware-specific application).

Note This process must be repeated for each device driver application that needs to be used during a deployment.