Inject drivers in Windows installation after motherboard change

gistfile1.txt

Today, after working with Windows for over 15 years now, I finally came across the solution to the 
dreadfull BSOD STOP 0x0000007B after replacing the motherboard of a computer, or after moving the 
harddrive to another computer, or after doing a P2V, or after ... you get the point.

Requirements:
- Windows install / boot CD
- Chipset / Mobo / Storage drivers of the new motherboard or storage controller

Steps:
- extract all the drivers to a USB thumb drive
- boot with the Windows CD
- go to the recovery console (typically hidden somewhere under repair, or advanced tools
- find out what drive letter your windows installation is in (probably C:) and what drive letter your 
USB thumb drive is in (let's assume D:)
- type in the magic command:

    DISM /Image:C:\ /Add-Driver /driver:D:\ /recurse

- wait until the process completes. You should see lines indicating what driver is being injected
- reboot

After rebooting, you should be able to boot into windows (if the boot menu for start-up repair shows, 
just select the option to boot Windows normally). Once booted, Windows will probably install some more 
drivers and you will probably need to reboot once more. There's also a chance that you'll need to 
re-activate your Windows.

Just wanted to throw out there that this works fantastic (Confirmed just now). This is very similar to Sysprep commands we used to use to build an installation media to roll out to many PC's.
Scenario for me: I run a small Pc Repair shop and generally use Acronis (used to use Ghost) to Image\Clone a HDD or SSD 1 to 1 from an old Device to new. This works great up to the 90% - However, a large amount of my clients are picking up cheaper HP Laptop and Desktops that force the Intel VMD Driver- (e.g. one cannot disable VMD in favor for AHCI). As such, Acronis and a large amount of cloning software's cannot detect the physical controller if cloning while on the new Device.
If pulling the drive and cloning from an alternate System (E.g. taking old and new drives out of the respective Systems to an interim bench system)- You can clone fine, but once introducing to the newly cloned drive to the new machine, it wont fully boot (gives the expected errors.)
On functionally any other make Laptop or Desktop (Lenovo, Asus, etc) one can simply switch controller mode via BIOS from VMD to AHCI and that solves the mystery there.
In any case- Here is my workflow now for HP- Pre-download the VMD drivers from HP. From there, one can boot into Recovery Command prompt of the OLD system.
Run the DISM commands as above, thus injecting driver on old Drive. Do this first and save some hassle.
Pull old and new drives from respective Systems. Clone on Bench. Place the newly cloned drive, with injected drivers into the new Device and I found it booted right up (beautiful).
Alternately, I also found that I can pull both drives, attach to bench and clone 1 to 1. On that same bench system, run CMD elevated. Run the DISM commands as above, but simply change drive letters to reflect the hierarchy of what the bench sees in Windows explorer. Better put- You can run this DISM command on an interim System externally just fine- In my case, C:\ was primary of the bench. The newly cloned drive was E:\ and I already had a thumbdrive (f:) with the .sys and .dll's. I just ran DISM in this scenario as: DISM /Image:E:\ /Add-Driver /driver:F:\ /recurse
and it injected the driver into the System state of E:, even though I was running Windows live on the C:\ of the alternate System. Pretty cool stuff. Just saved a ton of work from not having to reload all apps, and tie in all the other items.
Mucho obliged. I hope what I typed out is sensical enough to help out. Let me know if I need to clarify a bit better.

I'm in this exact situation, having moved an nvme drive from a dying 10th-gen i7 HP lappy to a newer 11th-gen i3 unit and it refuses to acknowledge the system drive unless I load the RST driver from the command line. With the RST driver loaded, I can inject the RST driver and the chipset driver into the image via DISM, but on reboot I'm still landing at the useless "automatic repair" with no system drive. I've tried installing the nvme into a bench system and injecting the drivers from there via DISM, still with a negatory result.

My only conclusion is that I am missing another driver. Since I can't switch the machine to AHCI, what VMD driver are you using when you go through this? The bog standard F6 driver included with the RST driver on HP's web site works, but not after it's injected into the image!

Same issue as @LitlJayHeise no matter what I could do to inject the Intel RST driver on Dell's site it simply wouldn't boot. Luckily I did have ACHI as an option in bios and it booted fine. I believe the lowdown is once machine is installed as ACHI (Non Raid), you can't load the Intel VMD Raid drivers. I even tried to install the drivers once I was booted into windows but it said "incompatible platform", which means it wanted VMD mode...ugh, what a pain, especially if ACHI isn't an option. So the question is how to properly load the Intel RST VMD drivers using DISM...That is the million dollar question. I did not want to have my client pay me to reload the OS and copy over all his data and settings and what not... Just seems silly that injecting drivers aren't enough here...More is needed, probably due to the complexity of the Intel RST drivers themselves needing more than just DISM injection to load. Word on the interwebs is that you can only load it on a clean OS install...hmmmm. Oh yes, I used Windows 10 as well...

Ohh wow...
This was super helpful.

I have a Supermicro Server with Xeon 4th gen Silver. I installed Windows Server 2022 Standard edition on it.
The Problem I had was that VMD was deactivated when I installed the Server OS.

Weeks later when I activated VMD for VROC in BIOS I got the bluescreen of death when booting the OS.
With this neat trick I was able to inject the VROC driver to the Server 2022 OS with the Install USB-Stick.

After injection the OS bootet without bsod.

@johnthepro You saved my ass with your wonderful step by step instructions on here. I created an account just to thank you. I was working on setting up a dual boot situation on my work laptop on the NVME C drive and I created a partition to install a personal version of windows 11 D drive to play video games on. I could not get my drive to be visible to install windows on the partition. Your instructions worked perfectly for this application and I cant thank you enough!

I’m really glad I was able to help you!! Thank you for the kudos, and enjoy your dual boot games!!

…

On Fri, Mar 1, 2024 at 3:38 PM Aldrinlights ***@***.***> wrote: ***@***.**** commented on this gist. ------------------------------ @johnthepro <https://github.com/johnthepro> You saved my ass with your wonderful step by step instructions on here. I created an account just to thank you. I was working on setting up a dual boot situation on my work laptop on the NVME C drive and I created a partition to install a personal version of windows 11 D drive to play video games on. I could not get my drive to be visible to install windows on the partition. Your instructions worked perfectly for this application and I cant thank you enough! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <https://gist.github.com/TomCan/9644966#gistcomment-4958523> or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AK3FMHRX5GLAZ654RI5W3GTYWEGPNBFKMF2HI4TJMJ2XIZLTSKBKK5TBNR2WLJDUOJ2WLJDOMFWWLO3UNBZGKYLEL5YGC4TUNFRWS4DBNZ2F6YLDORUXM2LUPGBKK5TBNR2WLJDHNFZXJJDOMFWWLK3UNBZGKYLEL52HS4DFVRZXKYTKMVRXIX3UPFYGLK2HNFZXIQ3PNVWWK3TUUZ2G64DJMNZZDAVEOR4XAZNEM5UXG5FFOZQWY5LFU44TMNBUHE3DNJ3UOJUWOZ3FOKTGG4TFMF2GK> . You are receiving this email because you were mentioned. Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub> .

Had to migrate a harddrive to a newer gen device and it wasn't able to boot after the migration. saved me and my customer a lot of stress, thank you for this post!

Hello, I'm trying to follow the guide but I'm getting a error 87, add driver option is unknown?
I copied the same command and only changes C and D to my systems drive letters, I check the uppercase lower case everything was copy paste from the command

As if you didn't hear this enough, THANK YOU SO MUCH!

add driver option is unknown?

Interestingly DISM Image Management Command-Line Options does not list the option, but DISM Driver Servicing (.inf) Command-Line Options does.

Unfortunally i have Error 87 and the process end.
any workaround?

Unfortunally i have Error 87 and the process end. any workaround?

Can you provide a screenshot or at least all of the text from the error message? Context is very important, and the error message text can convey a lot more information than just the error number.

Thank you so much

Thank you!!!
Scenario:

• doing a BareMetalRestore from HP z420 to HP Z2 G9
• Windows will start, if VMD in Bios is disabled. In Windows, you can also install all HP-driver. Excluding the VMD-driver, because there is no hardware enabled.
• Windows runs into BSOD, if VMD in Bios is enabled
• after a lot of headache, i found this post, which saved my weekend ;)
• now i've a nvme-raid and i'm happy

Unfortunally i have Error 87 and the process end. any workaround?

Can you provide a screenshot or at least all of the text from the error message? Context is very important, and the error message text can convey a lot more information than just the error number.

I'm also getting the exact error 87. When I do dism /?, the add-driver and add-package option is not listed. I'm on Windows 11 24H2.

Below is the full error message.

PS C:\Users\Admin> Dism /Image:"F:\z2\zMount" /Add-Driver /Driver:"F:\z2\2Drivers-Boot" /Recurse

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.26100.1150

Image Version: 10.0.19041.1288

Error: 87

The add-driver option is unknown.
For more information, refer to the help by running DISM.exe /?.

The DISM log file can be found at C:\Windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log

This aboslutely saved my ass. Saving this for fututre reference. THANK YOU,

Hello, I just opened an account to ask for help.

I have downloaded Windows 11 to my Acer Nitro v15-51 without VMD.

VMD was a hassle, and because I don't understand, I just disabled VMD.

But when a new bios update comes, it opens VMD automatically, so I get a blue screen, and I have to open the boot menu to close VMD again.

Now, I want to enable VMD, but because the OS was installed without the VMD driver, it doesn't start with the option on. Even after downloading VMD driver and installing it in the OS.

I guess I had to install the driver in the setup screen.

I'm 80% sure the answer to my problem is here, injecting the driver.
But because I don't understand anything about this topic, can someone explain it to me?

I literally need an explanation on a toddler level. (T_T)
Thank you in advance.