[bachru4u]

hey i am a newbee here i just want to know whether it is possible to place all inf files for the drvers to istall with respective path to respective 7z file separately 7 packing all drvers individually in 7z format eg
D\G\A\I.7z for intel drivers
D\G\A\M.7z for Metrox
D\G\A\s3.7z for S3 grahic
and so on for sound card driver also
this way only needed driverpack is extracted saving time for extracting full 9 packages & then deleting after installtion is over
thanks in advance & hope my suggestion is acted upon

[IcemanND]

I think what you are asking is if each individual sub folder could be compressed and then they get uncompressed as windows needs them for the install. If this is your question then the answer would be no.

Windows has to have direct access to the INF files and also does not have native 7zip capabilities. You would have to rewrite the driver installation portion of windows to accomplish this.

[MadBoy]

IcemanND, on Feb 14 2008, 06:54 PM, said:

I think what you are asking is if each individual sub folder could be compressed and then they get uncompressed as windows needs them for the install. If this is your question then the answer would be no.

Windows has to have direct access to the INF files and also does not have native 7zip capabilities. You would have to rewrite the driver installation portion of windows to accomplish this.

Not quite It's doable and actually wouldn't be that hard to achieve. I guess i could add that option to my little proggy if i get time (not very soon). I could tell my program to scan for .7z or other archived packages, then unpack one (scan all inf's and add them to db - this is already part of the program), then unpack another and so on. After that delete all files except the .7z ones and the .db would have format like HW_ID,INF_PATH,IN_WHICH_PACK. Then it would only unpack what's nessecary and point only windows to correct inf's The only draw back is it's in the post install stage (noone tried using my program in other stage i guess). And i would actually have to do some work on it Not a biggy, nice idea and maybe some day

[IcemanND]

Ok, post install possibly, during windows installation I don't see a way. Seems like a lot of work in comparison to extracting the the hard drive and deleting later.

[MadBoy]

IcemanND, on Feb 14 2008, 10:19 PM, said:

Ok, post install possibly, during windows installation I don't see a way. Seems like a lot of work in comparison to extracting the the hard drive and deleting later.

Well if you would do a lot of small packs (not like bashrat huge packs) that would be small ones (5MB per pack or even less) and the program would only have to unpack 3 packs from 50-70 packs, considering amount of space saved it may be worth it. And since the packs would be small the speed of unpacking wouldn't be killer for the the time it would take It's a nice idea but like you said mostly Post install stage

[bachru4u]

MadBoy, on Feb 15 2008, 02:54 AM, said:

IcemanND, on Feb 14 2008, 10:19 PM, said:

Ok, post install possibly, during windows installation I don't see a way. Seems like a lot of work in comparison to extracting the the hard drive and deleting later.

Well if you would do a lot of small packs (not like bashrat huge packs) that would be small ones (5MB per pack or even less) and the program would only have to unpack 3 packs from 50-70 packs, considering amount of space saved it may be worth it. And since the packs would be small the speed of unpacking wouldn't be killer for the the time it would take It's a nice idea but like you said mostly Post install stage

thanks again for all response

my suggestion was for packing all drivers individually that is correct but their inf is placed in OEM folder inf is suitably modified to point to respective .7z or .cab file plced in i386 or OEM folder .like as we install addon with during inf & cab files
i know modifiying all infs will be messy & time consuming but it can save time during driver installtion
i installed winxp with 6 driver pack less sound A,B, just 3 days back & after text setup restart it took approx 7-8 min then the 39 min page came

[MadBoy]

bachru4u, on Feb 15 2008, 06:08 AM, said:

MadBoy, on Feb 15 2008, 02:54 AM, said:

IcemanND, on Feb 14 2008, 10:19 PM, said:

Ok, post install possibly, during windows installation I don't see a way. Seems like a lot of work in comparison to extracting the the hard drive and deleting later.

Well if you would do a lot of small packs (not like bashrat huge packs) that would be small ones (5MB per pack or even less) and the program would only have to unpack 3 packs from 50-70 packs, considering amount of space saved it may be worth it. And since the packs would be small the speed of unpacking wouldn't be killer for the the time it would take It's a nice idea but like you said mostly Post install stage

thanks again for all response

my suggestion was for packing all drivers individually that is correct but their inf is placed in OEM folder inf is suitably modified to point to respective .7z or .cab file plced in i386 or OEM folder .like as we install addon with during inf & cab files
i know modifiying all infs will be messy & time consuming but it can save time during driver installtion
i installed winxp with 6 driver pack less sound A,B, just 3 days back & after text setup restart it took approx 7-8 min then the 39 min page came

I would never go for doing it manually. Either write a script that will do it for you or don't do it at all. Having to go thru 2000 inf file isn't realy fun and all