From Site Manager 8.1.7888 a 'Drivers' page has been added to the 'Restore' menu. This page provides greater visibility of the drivers that have been harvested by, or added to, Site Manager, as well as the ability to export drivers for a selected agent computer and download the driver harvester tool:
Drivers
Drivers for agent hardware that is not already compatible with Windows PE will be copied to the Site Manager server and stored in a database ('drivers.db' in the Site Manager programdata directory). Site Manager automatically requests new drivers from agents if a hardware change is detected and drivers of removed computers will be deleted from the database. The 'Drivers' table will show all of the drivers that have been harvested by, or manually added to, Site Manager. The table will also show associated information for each driver, including driver version number, version date, the date and time that the driver was imported, driver state, driver class, and how the driver has been added to Site Manager.
The columns in this table can be filtered to make finding particular drivers easier:
The possible states for drivers are shown below:
| Driver State | Explanation |
|---|---|
| OK | The driver has been successfully harvested by, or manually added to Site Manager and is ready to be included in rescue media creation. |
| Duplicate | The driver is a duplicate and has been harvested by, or manually added to, Site Manager multiple times. This is informational and does not require action, however, duplicate drivers may be removed without impacting hardware support in the rescue media. Selecting the 'Duplicate' link will display where the file is duplicated:
|
| Missing Files | The driver is incomplete and some of the driver files are missing. This is primarily a warning, as some driver INF files will mention files that are not included with the driver leading to the warning being displayed, while the driver will still be included in rescue media. The driver should be checked to ensure that all of the required files are available. |
Export Drivers
Site Manager collects drivers needed to build rescue media for connected agents. These drivers may be exported for use in disaster recovery by using the 'Export all Drivers' or 'Export Selected Drivers' options. This will copy all the drivers to the drivers\export folder in the rescue media working directory,
The 'Group extracted drivers by Agent Rescue Media configuration' option places the exported drivers into subfolders based on the relevant Windows PE version for that computer - e.g. all computers which require rescue media based on Windows PE 10 64-bit will have their drivers exported to the drivers\export\PE10x64 folder.
This can be useful when extracting drivers to create custom rescue media or moving drivers between Site Manager servers.
Driver Harvester
The 'Driver Harvester' enables drivers to be harvested from a Windows operating system. This can be especially useful to harvest drivers from a non-Site Manager Agent computer. The 'Download’ button can be used to download the 'Driver Harvester' to the browser that is being used to access Site Manager.
The driver harvester can then be run on the desired computer. Devices that are supported in Windows PE by default will be shown as ‘No Drivers Required – Supported in PE’ in the ‘Status’ column. The driver files, for devices that are not supported in Windows PE, can be saved to a folder using the 'Save To Folder' button:
Where to place manual drivers
To add manually add drivers to the rescue media, the drivers should be placed in the following folder:
C:\ProgramData\Macrium\SiteManager\RescueMedia\drivers folder
These drivers will then be shown in the 'Drivers' table and will be included in the relevant rescue media that matches their operating system support.
Please note: After placing drivers in this folder, you need to rebuild the rescue media to include the drivers.
Manufacturer driver packs
In the event that drivers cannot be added to the rescue media using one of the above methods (for example, when restoring to a bare metal system), driver packs can be manually downloaded from the system/hardware device manufacturer's website and added to the folder above. Below are links to some system manufacturer's driver website pages:
Lenovo - https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/
Dell - https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-uk?app=drivers
HP - https://support.hp.com/gb-en/drivers
ASUS - https://www.asus.com/support/Download-Center/
acer - https://www.acer.com/gb-en/support/drivers-and-manuals
msi - https://www.msi.com/support/download
Drivers are made up of the following files:
- .inf file. This contains a description of the driver and its associated files. It will include a list of hardware it supports and what operating system and CPU type it supports.
- .sys file. This is the driver software.
- .cat file. This is a list of included files with their cryptographic hashes or thumbprints.
It may also contain supplementary files containing localized text etc.
If driver packs are distributed as an executable and not a zip archive, there are two methods to extract the relevant driver files:
7-Zip
7-Zip is a free and open-source file archiver. (https://www.7-zip.org)
Using third-party tools, it is possible to open the archive of the executable and manually extract files from inside it. One such tool is 7-Zip a free, open-source archiving tool.
In the example below, 7-Zip has been used to open the archive of a Dell Network Adapter to extract the relevant driver files. This will allow the deployment media to communicate with the network adapter.
Once you have extracted the installer, you can locate where the driver files are located. Depending on how the installer is constructed, it may be necessary to extract further files. For example, driver files may be located in a cabinet file (an archive file format), within the executable.
By opening the cabinet file, the relevant files can be extracted. These files can then be added to the relevant folder shown above.
Temp
The second way to extract the driver files from the installer is by running the installer. When the installer is running, these files are often stored in the %Temp% folder.
You can access this folder by pressing the Windows + R keys. This will open the ‘Run’ search menu. In the search box, enter %Temp% and press enter.
By checking the folders located in %Temp%, you can often locate these driver files.
For further support downloading drivers, we recommend contacting the system/hardware manufacturer directly.