Supporting Older Hardware

[meister]

Anyone have thoughts on how I can support some of the older hardware I have in my environment? Some of it is, believe it or not, years old, and the company that makes it isn't even around. Yeah, I know tell them to buy new stuff :-)

But in the meantime, take this one usb device that may or may not be attached to a machine....as of now I'll put my base image down on it, reboot and when it finds the hardware I'll run through the installation. Obviously I'd rather have it just autodetect to when the PC comes out of mini setup it will auto detect and install the software. Here's a dir listing for the install files for that usb device

01/31/2000 05:00 AM 25,600 borlndmm.dll

07/08/2005 09:16 AM 1,496,064 cc3250mt.dll

07/06/2007 10:02 AM 23,040 DocDetectDll.dll

06/26/2007 04:45 PM 49,152 ErrorHandlerDll.dll

12/22/2005 04:58 PM 92 Ftdiun2k.ini

09/02/2005 03:44 PM 77,824 FTDIUNIN.exe

07/18/2003 01:55 PM 1,700,352 gdiplus.dll

07/06/2007 10:01 AM 25,088 GPIODLL.dll

06/26/2007 04:45 PM 65,536 ImgDll.dll

03/30/2009 09:00 PM 3,834 INSTALL.LOG

06/26/2007 04:46 PM 14,336 LedDll.dll

08/19/2004 01:39 PM 57,344 lfbmp14N.dll

08/23/2004 11:36 AM 401,408 Lfcmp14n.dll

08/19/2004 01:39 PM 102,400 lffax14N.dll

08/19/2004 01:40 PM 262,144 LFJ2K14N.dll

08/19/2004 01:40 PM 163,840 lftif14N.dll

09/28/2006 04:04 PM 1,073,152 libeay32.dll

08/24/2004 03:33 PM 1,703,936 LTCLR14N.dll

08/12/2004 01:33 PM 299,008 LTDIS14N.dll

08/19/2004 01:37 PM 282,624 ltefx14N.dll

08/19/2004 01:37 PM 167,936 ltfil14N.DLL

08/19/2004 01:37 PM 950,272 ltimg14N.dll

08/23/2004 05:56 PM 495,616 ltkrn14N.dll

08/02/2006 11:20 AM 434,245 lucamapi.dll

08/19/2004 01:38 PM 274,432 Lvkrn14N.dll

03/18/2003 09:20 PM 1,060,864 MFC71.dll

09/16/2003 09:07 AM 499,712 msvcp71.dll

02/21/2003 04:42 AM 348,160 msvcr71.dll

06/26/2007 04:45 PM 163,840 OCRdll.dll

11/02/2005 09:50 AM 147,456 Reader.dll

06/26/2007 04:46 PM 45,056 ReaderDll.dll

06/11/2007 11:31 AM 23,552 RTDecodeWrapper.dll

06/26/2007 05:21 PM 40,448 RTE8000ePassportAPI.dll

07/06/2007 10:02 AM 192,512 RTE8000LowLevelAPI.dll

06/26/2007 05:21 PM 479,744 RTePassportAPI.dll

06/26/2007 04:46 PM 11,264 SecurityDll.dll

06/08/2006 02:26 PM 90,112 SetEnv2K.exe

06/26/2007 04:45 PM 69,632 SettingsDll.dll

06/26/2007 04:46 PM 21,504 SoundDLL.dll

09/28/2006 04:04 PM 200,704 ssleay32.dll

05/10/2001 10:04 AM 162,304 UNWISE.EXE

06/27/2007 10:41 AM 208,896 USVISIT-12.dll

06/27/2007 10:41 AM 208,896 USVISIT.dll

07/08/2005 10:16 AM 2,023,424 vcl50.bpl

07/08/2005 10:16 AM 248,832 vclx50.bpl

If I put all those files into C:\Drivers\usb and set OemPnPDriversPath=C:\Drivers\usb it doesn't seem to work, notice no ing file for this legacy piece of hardware....anyone have any thoughts?

[g-force]

I don`t know where these files come from or what they are good for - but there`s no "example.inf" and "example.sys".

INF and SYS are needed in every driver I know and integrate. Try DriverGrabber or DoubleDriver on a system where

this hardware is pretty installed to save the driver-files.

[meister]

Oops my bad, i did the wrong directory....but i'll make it even simpler as i found this, for a new broadband card thats integrated to the dell e6400 laptop, heres the driver exploded:

03/31/2009 02:49 PM <DIR> .

03/31/2009 02:49 PM <DIR> ..

03/31/2009 02:49 PM 0 1

04/30/2008 10:45 AM 27,081,774 setup.exe

04/17/2008 08:53 AM 918 systemid.zip

08/13/2008 12:08 PM 421 Version.txt

4 File(s) 27,083,113 bytes

2 Dir(s) 29,525,884,928 bytes free

Essentially just a setup.exe. Here's whats in version.txt:

Title: Communications: Dell Wireless 5720 VZW Mobile Broadband (EVDO Rev-A) MiniCard DRVR

Version : A01

OEM name : Dell Wireless 5720 VZW Mobile Broadband (EVDO Rev-A) MiniCard

OEM Version: 2.09.01.14 Build#021

Computers : Latitude E6400, E6500, E4300, E4200, E5400

OSes : Windows Vista 32-bit,Windows XP x64,Windows Vista 64-bit,Windows XP

Languages : English

Created : Friday, November 07, 2008

I'm guessing this isn't a driver then, just a software pack....but then again it could have driver files in the setup.exe, I just cant figure out how to explode it :-)

[Noise]

Well, you need to decompress that setup.exe and get to the .sys and .inf files inside it. I use UniExtract for this type of job - it usually figures it out. Just right-click setup.exe and Uniextract to a subdirectory. WinRar might be able to do it too - check by right-clicking setup.exe and checking if WinRar can extract it.

Also, you're using your OemPnPDriversPath setting wrong. The OemPnPDriversPath setting is relative to your $OEM$ directory.

[meister]

I'll give UniExtract a try and let you know, thank you.

Thanks for the info about the $OEM$ too, just starting to learn how to use this actually :-) Can you tell? LOL