Hardware Wizard appears after DPInst on WinXP

I am a newbie driver signer. My original goal was to produce a silent install for a USB driver. After lots of trial and error, and reading this forum I am satisfied that a non-WHQL signed driver (cross signed) cannot be silently installed.

Using DPInst.exe I am able to pre-install the driver with a minimum of popup’s which is acceptable.

On Vista and Win7 I can plug in the device after the pre-install and the driver install completes with no user intervention, just some ballon messages from the system tray.

But on WinXP, after the pre-install, when I plug in the device the Hardware Wizard fires up. I have checked and after DPInst there is an entry in the driver store (DVRSTORE).

Why is the Hardware Wizard running when a valid driver exists in the driver store on XP? Is there any way to prevent this?

thank you.
Jeff Reich
AP Instruments

On 06/05/2011 03:59 PM, xxxxx@apinstruments.com wrote:

Why is the Hardware Wizard running when a valid driver exists in the driver store on XP?

For Windows7, Microsoft “improved the User Experience” for driver
installation: if there is no driver found on “Windows Update” or
pre-installed (in-box or via DPinst) for a device, Win7 just installs a
non-functional “null driver” for your device (there is a WinHEC2008
presentation about this, downloadable from Microsoft).

For XP, the “driver package pre-installation” (a) enables you to use the
“automatic installation” option in the Hardware Wizard, and (b) gets rid
of older driver versions in the driver store (so that next time you plug
a device without USB serial number at another port you don’t
accidentally install the wrong driver).

Is there any way to prevent this?

Yes, there is: get your driver WHQL signed (-> silent install).

although not the answer I was hoping for, thank you.

Jeff Reich