Darn!!!

[Commander Suzdal]

I am here to rant.

I am an IT guy. One of my responsibilities is to prep new computers (both laptops and desktops) for new employees. Part of my checklist is to remove unnecessary OEM software.

One of the strangest trends I have seen from OEM's over the years is the fascination with creating multitudes of utilities to perform functions that Windows is capable of handling perfectly well on its own. Why? Provide a driver for the hardware. Then let the appropriate Windows Control Panel applet manage it.

Sound. Wireless networking. Windows Update. Touchpads. Everything has to have its own branded utility for some godforsaken reason. Not only are they unnecessary, but the OEM has to hire programmers to create, debug, patch and update all these utilities, which requires still ANOTHER utility. This is costing them money, for no return. And it consumes both memory and processor cycles, which is why we uninstall them.

Fair enough, I guess. Uninstall the useless crap and move on. But the OEMs seem to think this is an arms race, and in the last few years they have raised the stakes. If you uninstall the branded utility, you also uninstall the driver. Now the integrated device doesn't work at all. Try to download a driver and just point to it through device manager to solve this problem? Gotcha! The driver only comes in an EXE, and it won't install without reinstalling the useless utility (what a paradox!) that you were trying to get rid of in the first place.

WHY???????

 

[SvenBent]

I feel for you i work in refurbishing and have to deal with the same sh#t

However most of the times i can use 7-zip to unextract it. og monitor the tmp folder to see what goings on and copy the raw driver out that way.

Also you shoudl totally install "Project Mercury" on all those laptops

 

[sonsonate]

I feel for you i work in refurbishing and have to deal with the same sh#t

However most of the times i can use 7-zip to unextract it. og monitor the tmp folder to see what goings on and copy the raw driver out that way.

Also you shoudl totally install "Project Mercury" on all those laptops

This has totally saved me installing a bunch of crap for drivers.

 

[Commander Suzdal]

I feel for you i work in refurbishing and have to deal with the same sh#t

However most of the times i can use 7-zip to unextract it. og monitor the tmp folder to see what goings on and copy the raw driver out that way.

Also you shoudl totally install "Project Mercury" on all those laptops

So 7-Zip can extract files from an EXE?

 

[auntjemima]

Not just 7zip. Winrar also does this in most cases. It really depends if the file is one of those badboys that extract files before installing them.

 

[skiddierow]

A lot of the driver packages from OEMs are just self-extracting exes. There are exceptions usually with security utils, bluetooth software, etc.

Use 7-zip to open archive and look for the setup exes, many times the infs are exposed in those cases.

Lenovo uses some (I'm guessing) proprietary method of archiving, so you'll need to run those setups to extract to a folder, and there you should have the infs.

 

[Commander Suzdal]

Well, I'm glad I ranted--learned new skillz in the process! Thanks to all for your info.

 

[ReCOde]

GeekUninstall. A better GUI than Windows', and allows you to uninstall multiple things at once. Does not need to be installed.

It's freeeeee =D

 

[Deleted member 245375]

Guess I'm lucky 'cause I never use any kind of control panel related app for any piece of hardware, not one. The last time I did that was years ago with a sound chip in my Dell Latitude E6400 laptop that controlled aspects like the SRS audio crap (never used it because it ruins the sound quality) or whether or not the mic/line-in jack was working as a mic input or line-in input at any given time (that I definitely made use of as I did a lot of audio production work of various kinds when I owned that laptop).

With my Latitude E6420, there's not one instance of having anything but raw drivers for hardware support installed at this time for Windows 7 Pro - I simply don't have any use for such applets in the control panel and so none exist.

As noted, more often than not the drivers are distributed as self-extracting archives or you can use a tool like WinRAR or 7zip and in the most extreme cases a tool like Universal Extractor to get the archive contents into a folder where you can then (typically) do a manual installation through Device Manager. That's not always the case as on some occasions the drivers will be distributed in some funky installer format with compressed archives that may even require some pass code embedded in the installer itself - in such instances if you keep an eye on the Windows temp folders (there are two primary ones: one inside the Windows directly at C:\Windows\temp and another inside the C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp where the installer will extract everything to).

Because the files only exist in the temp directory (if they do) while the installer itself is running usually the method is start the installer, when it gets to the first dialogue or the first "Click Next to continue..." button appears, that's when you check the temp directory looking for the most recent material (you can look at the folder contents by Details and then sort by date/time if needed).

It's almost a black art of sorts but I've never had a situation where I couldn't get the actual raw drivers themselves from any installer of any kind - when that happens, I then make sure to back up the saved drivers for future purposes.

 

[Commander Suzdal]

Guess I'm lucky 'cause I never use any kind of control panel related app for any piece of hardware, not one. The last time I did that was years ago with a sound chip in my Dell Latitude E6400 laptop that controlled aspects like the SRS audio crap (never used it because it ruins the sound quality) or whether or not the mic/line-in jack was working as a mic input or line-in input at any given time (that I definitely made use of as I did a lot of audio production work of various kinds when I owned that laptop).

With my Latitude E6420, there's not one instance of having anything but raw drivers for hardware support installed at this time for Windows 7 Pro - I simply don't have any use for such applets in the control panel and so none exist.

As noted, more often than not the drivers are distributed as self-extracting archives or you can use a tool like WinRAR or 7zip and in the most extreme cases a tool like Universal Extractor to get the archive contents into a folder where you can then (typically) do a manual installation through Device Manager. That's not always the case as on some occasions the drivers will be distributed in some funky installer format with compressed archives that may even require some pass code embedded in the installer itself - in such instances if you keep an eye on the Windows temp folders (there are two primary ones: one inside the Windows directly at C:\Windows\temp and another inside the C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp where the installer will extract everything to).

Because the files only exist in the temp directory (if they do) while the installer itself is running usually the method is start the installer, when it gets to the first dialogue or the first "Click Next to continue..." button appears, that's when you check the temp directory looking for the most recent material (you can look at the folder contents by Details and then sort by date/time if needed).

It's almost a black art of sorts but I've never had a situation where I couldn't get the actual raw drivers themselves from any installer of any kind - when that happens, I then make sure to back up the saved drivers for future purposes.

I was actually a little uncertain about the "get them from the temp folder" comment above, thanks for the detailed walkthrough!

 

[st4rk]

I am an IT guy. One of my responsibilities is to prep new computers (both laptops and desktops) for new employees

Stupid question: Why aren't you using an imaging process?

 

[Commander Suzdal]

Stupid question: Why aren't you using an imaging process?

Not stupid at all, definitely something I should look into. That's what we used in my last place, but it was a much larger org and I was just a cog in the IT machine.

When I was brought on here, I followed my predecessor's procedures, but I have enough autonomy that I could make changes.

They do tweak some things on a per-user basis that would make imaging less of a time-saver than at larger/more standardized places, but it would still solve me having to do some of the little things over and over.

 

[cyclone3d]

Not stupid at all, definitely something I should look into. That's what we used in my last place, but it was a much larger org and I was just a cog in the IT machine.

When I was brought on here, I followed my predecessor's procedures, but I have enough autonomy that I could make changes.

They do tweak some things on a per-user basis that would make imaging less of a time-saver than at larger/more standardized places, but it would still solve me having to do some of the little things over and over.

Imaging with imagex/gimagex is a pretty painless process. It is what I used here before they started deploying images via Dell KACE and PXE-boot... and much faster.

I just made a clean image (sysprep with generalize option) with only the Intel NIC driver, Office, and all current Windows updates installed and then had a network share with different folders for all the drivers for all the different computers.

Took about 45 minutes to get any computer with an SSD ready from scratch.

Then every few months I would make a new image since sysprep freaks out after about the 4-5th time it is run on the same image. I would install updates on the clean image and then sysprep/capture it again when a large number of updates were being installed after imaging.

I would like to go back to that method as the PXE-boot imaging takes at least 1.5 hours not including updates and other software I have to install.