Does the Auto Apply Drivers task sequence step require the drivers to be in a driver package?

Question

I have recently started using the Auto Apply Drivers step instead of Apply Driver Package to deploy drivers for my machines and I was wondering, do I still need to create and publish driver pacages or is it enough to import the drivers into SCCM for Auto Apply Drivers to work.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You answered your question.. some details here: yes, you do need driver packs and they must be distributed. The 'special' thing is that the machine will only honor drivers that are on ANY DP in its boundaries (so you can distribute packs to limited set of DPs.. I strongly advise against that though).

The process is generally: - The machine creates a list of PnP IDs frmo out of WinPE - The list is sent to the MP - The MP queries what drivers that are in the selected categories, are enabled and are available on the DP in the machines boundaries are available / applicable - The list of drivers is sent to the workstation, downloaded and installed.

NOTE: Some devices 'only' appear with correct IDs after a 'base' driver was installed (happens on a couple of USB dongles that 'switch' between disk and other modes); for those, Auto-Apply generally does not work as expected (WinPE only reports the initial IDs, not the morphed ones).

Answer 2

To answer my own question, after some testing it appears that drivers must be in a package or they will not be installed by Auto Apply Drivers.

Answer 3

if you using auto apply you don't need the package driver. just import drivers to SCCM BUT, i preffer use the drivers packages to tell to SCCM what drivers must be used. just create a package, its really simple and use a query by machine's model.

a WQL query like: SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE Model LIKE “%Latitude 3440%”

this way you don't will let Windows get "wrongs drivers"