By Val Bakh 2.4.3 Load Drivers in WinPE Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) is one of the most important enhancements to Windows 7. WinPE’s first version was released with Windows Vista. Version 3.0 is the version that comes with Windows 7. WinPE is a small starter OS that can be loaded from any removable media or device such as a CD or DVD. It can also run entirely on RAM. This allows you to breathe life into a dead computer or to restore a corrupted, dysfunctional Windows installation.
Windows 7 install DVDs include a standard version of WinPE. However, you can use Windows Automated Installation Kit (WISIK) to create your own version with additional tools such as ImageX. WinPE is built on the same kernel that Windows 7 and includes tools for managing hard drives, creating installation images for mass deployments, maintaining those images, as well as troubleshooting corrupted installs.
Windows 7 comes with a large library of drivers for common devices. Windows 7 should be able to support most hardware, unless you have very old or exotic hardware. WinPE isn’t very powerful so there is a chance that you will attempt to start an install and find that there are no hard drives available. After clicking Install Now on the first screen of Windows installation, you will see a list of “available” disks under Where do I want Windows to be installed? title. The Load Driver link is the link to the solution. Click it to navigate to the location where the driver for your disk controller can be found. This could be a CD, UFD, or floppy drive. After the driver has been installed, and the system has detected your hard disk, you are able to proceed with the installation.
What if you booted into WinPE to troubleshoot a problem, or prepare the hard drive for a custom deployment? After the WinPE boot is complete, click Repair my Computer and then click the System Recovery Options dialog box to click Load Drivers.
Windows has many ways to accomplish almost any task. WinPE also supports driver loading. To open a Command Prompt window, press Shift+F10 on your keyboard and type the following command
drvload PathDriverFile.inf
Keep in mind that drivers in WinPE are loaded dynamically. They are only stored in RAM and are deleted when you reboot. You will need to load the same drivers each time WinPE is booted. If you use WinPE frequently, it may be a better idea to create a custom WinPE version and add the drivers permanently using the Deployment Image Servicing & Management (DISM). DISM is available in WinPE as well as Windows 7.
