Installing a Driver after Prompting the User for a Distribution Medium

The Found New Hardware Wizard prompts for a distribution medium if one of the following is true:

  • The wizard could not download matching Windows Update drivers or the wizard did not locate matching preloaded drivers.

  • The wizard downloaded matching Windows Update drivers or located matching preloaded drivers. However, one or more of the matching drivers has the INF InteractiveInstall directive set for the device that is being installed. For information about the InteractiveInstall directive, see INF ControlFlags Section.

The Found New Hardware Wizard installs a driver for a device after prompting the user for a distribution medium, as follows:

  1. The wizard disables AutoRun and prompts the user for a distribution medium.

  2. If the user supplies a distribution medium and the distribution medium has an AutoRun-enabled application, the wizard determines whether the Autorun.inf file has an INF HardwareId directive entry that matches the device that is being installed. If a matching HardwareID directive entry is present, the wizard invokes the AutoRun-enabled application, which installs the driver instead of the wizard. For more information about this process, see Installing a Driver through an AutoRun-Enabled Application on a Distribution Medium.

    If a matching HardwareId directive entry is not present, the wizard continues with step 3.

  3. If the user does not supply a distribution medium, the wizard prompts the user to specify the location of the driver. The wizard continues with step 4.

  4. If the wizard did not locate any matching drivers, the wizard informs the user that a driver was not installed and then terminates. If the wizard located only one matching driver that has the best rank, the wizard installs that driver. If the wizard located more than one matching driver that has the best rank, the wizard prompts the user to select a driver from among the drivers that the wizard found, and then installs the driver that the user selects. For information about how Windows ranks drivers, see How Windows Ranks Drivers (Windows Vista and Later).

 

 

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