5 replies to this topic

[Heaton]

I'm working in a locked down Win2000 environment, and using Wise 3.1 to repackage a whole host of software.

The area I'm having real trouble with is installing USB device drivers. I have a HP scanner, CD-Writer, WebCam etc.. that I'd like users to be able to install via the Add\Remove programs. So when they plugin the device it is ready to use!

Anyone had any experience in this area??

[jsp]

Just copy your inf file in WindowsFolder\inf and your sys file in SystemFolder\drivers.
In your file remove the [CopyFile] or use a relative path.

[Heaton]

Thanks for the reply,

I have tried this approach which solves part of the problem, ie getting the drivers to the system. However, you still need to log-on as an admin user to actually install the drivers. The Hardware Wizard fails for a standard user, even when I try and launch it from within the MSI package - with elevated rights!

Which means we have to have the helpdesk have to log-on to the workstation remotely before the user can use the hardware!

Thanks again
Paul

[Gripper4Hire]

Heaton,

I don't believe you will be too successful using MSI to do this... Although the MSI service can run with elevated privledges, the device installer services you would require (Config Manager, Device Loader, and various other Kernel services) use the security settings of the user logged in to determine if they can perform their jobs. Thats why you can pre-install the INF, yet the install will still fail if the user doesn't have proper access rights.

You might be able to tweak the user settings in NT to get around this... but that defeats the whole purpose of not allowing users to install whatever HW they want.

For us -- under Windows 2000 -- we require a user to have admin rights to install our software for this vary reason.

I think under Windows XP, there maybe a slight modification to this behavior in regards to if the drivers you are installing has WHQL certification (and a corresponding Catalog (*.cat) file) a regular Joe user could install it on the system, but I'm not totally sure...

(Edited by Gripper4Hire at 3:50 pm on July 16, 2001)

[Heaton]

Thanks for the feed back, I'd pretty much come to the concluesion it was possible due to priviledges.

I will keep an eye out for the XP stuff !

Thanks again
Paul