WinPE is packaged with a large collection of drivers, but, there are many devices that are not part of the WinPE list of drivers. For WinPE to recognize your device, if it is not included, you need to add a driver so that it gets loaded at boot time of WinPE and allows WinPE to communicate with your device.
If a device is already supported you can choose to update it and use a different driver, you do not have to use the driver provided by WinPE for a device. This is useful when you are experiencing issues when performing backups/restores in WinPE, e.g.: slow restores from a USB device.
It is not necessary to add drivers for devices that are not supported in WinPE, the Rescue Media wizard does not force you to make all devices supported. This is because you may not be using certain devices when in WinPE, eg: network interface controllers (NIC) or USB controllers/hubs.
To establish if your device is included or not run a check. Instructions for doing this can be found ADD LINK HERE.
Once you have identified the drivers you want to update:
- Select the driver you want to update,left click it in the list of devices.
- Click Update Driver.
This presents a wizard. This wizard is straightforward to use, the first page prompts you for a folder to scan for drivers and whether you want to include all sub-folders.
- Select a folder.
- Click Next.
The wizard scans for drivers, automatically including the host operating system drivers if you do not choose to scan that folder. - When complete a list of results is displayed, select the driver from the list you want to use.
- Click Finish, this driver is copied to the WinPE disc.
A sample screen-shot of the final page is below.
If required make a bootable rescue environment that is compatible with multiple computers:
Caution: This technique only works with USB media.
- Use the Rescue media wizard to create a bootable USB rescue device on one computer.
- Repeat the process with each other computer in turn using the same USB device.