Plug and Play devices

[big_gie]

Hi,

How can I check if my devices are Plug and Play?

I have a Dell desktop. WinXP Home came with it and I want to install WinXP Pro on it. I installed it and there is 4 drivers that isn't installed (sound, game port, integrated nic and another one...)

I was able to extract my drivers with WinDriver Ghost. What I want to do is to put those drivers into Windows XP installation CD so everytime I'll install it, I wont have to add those drivers manually.

I found on Microsoft site's some info about "Unintended installation) (see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314459 for explanation) but it says that my devices must be plug and play to be able to add them to the cd.

How can I check this? If those drivers aren't plug and play, does anyone knows a way to put new drivers into XP installation CD?

tanx!

 

[Fox Mulder]

Chances are high that all the devices are Plug & Pray if the components are not very old(ISA interface for example).
In the device manager choose "Show hidden devices" and it will show you the non plug and pray ones.

 

[big_gie]

Plug and Play or Plug and Pray ?

Whats the difference?
My computer is Christmas new, so no old components
(Dell Dimension 4550
P4 2Ghz
512 Mb RAM
60+40 Gb HD
nVidia 64 Mb
LTD-163 DVD
...)


HAaa I see.. If my NIC, for exemple, is not into "Non Plug and Play Drivers" after selecting "Show hidden", then it should be Plug and Play, thats it?


So if those devices are plug and play, why does my CD installation doesn't work?

I compare my XP Home OEM CD with the XP Pro Retail CDand the only thing thats different is:

-OEM CD has, to the root, an $OEM$ directory, wich has ~1Mb of info, doesn't seems really important (Dell support)

-OEM's I386\Driver.cab is slitglhy bigger.

I made an iso from the retail cd, I added the $OEM$ directory to the root, change de I386\Driver.cab, made an "Winnt.sif" files on a floppy for an unintended setup with no intervention except choosing the partition, I also added to I386\$OEM$\$1\Drivers some directories with my drivers (I386\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\01\ for my graphic card, I386\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\02 for my NIC, etc.)

Burned the iso to a cd-rw and then installed XP.

Installation is ok, but after booting to the desktop, and checking my device manager, it tells me that there is some unknown devices.

How can it be possible if I told the setup to go check on the cd for the drivers???