When should a new driver be injected into WinPe
When using ATI 2016 WinPE there is a question if and when a new driver injection might be needed. I'll limit my question simple to USB3x support. As an example my system uses an Asus P8Z77 MB which natively (in the Std Windows OS) USB 3.0 under Windows 7 SP1+latest updates. In a number of situations, while performing Backup or Validation operations, the operation (to ext. HDD, using a Startech Enclosure w/ ASMedia Chipset) may freeze, with the external enclosure activity LED flashing, but progress has stopped, the mouse cursor is frozen and in fact windows is seemingly deadlocked...the only way out is a Hard Reset (or Powercycle). I have also seen this issue on several other PCs. I am guessing that some part of the SW operation has been requested, never completed and that either Windows or ATI has not included "timeout" monitoring.
I have noted that using a WinPE Rescue disk to create the backup appears never to fail. I have used the Win10 ADK to build the PE rescue, hoping that this properly adds USB3x support.
Considering that the Linux Rescue disk may also have similar "freeze" issues that eliminates the SW platform issue. Finally to my question (!) I'm not convinced that the Intel Z77 chipset native USB3 support and perhaps M.S. drivers are "too generic" and/or that the Z77 chipset USB drivers have somewhat limited USB electrical current specs.
Therefore, I'd like to install an SIIG addin pci-e USB 3 card, which uses the T.I. USB chipset and further provides a dedicated, internal powersupply connection. This card is supplied with TI specific USB drivers. How can I determine which USB3 drivers the generic ATI WinPE builder includes...? Stated another way; if I inject these drivers into my WinPE build, using the new MVP WinPE Builder, will I end up with duplicate drivers in the PE resulting?
Hope you can understand the overall situation.
Thx
Bob
The Generic WinPE uses whatever drivers are available in the Windows ADK used to build the WinPE. In most cases, Windows generic drivers will be fine if they are picking up the hardware. However, when custom drivers are available for a specific piece of hardware, having those drivers can improve performance, but it's really a crap shoot. I would lean towards using the specific drivers provided by the manufacturer if they are available and offer .inf versions of those drivers. These are normally newer/better drivers that can improve performance.
Also, normally, third party drivers added to WinPE will be the ones that load up automatically - just try not to inject multiple 3rd party drivers for the same device.
To find out what drivers are in your winpe, you can run DISM commands... example
Dism /image:C:\test\offline /Get-Drivers
As far as power management goes for USB - it's going to vary from system to system. I tend to believe that WinPE drivers are better than the Linux drivers, just because you can get more granular and provide newer drivers on your own, which are likely to be newer/better (but not always).
USB is a mixed bag on it's own. There are USB ports that are underpowered by default (Surface Pro 3 is a good example). On some systems, they use lower powered USB on some ports (usually front on PC's) than on others (back ports are typcially higher power rated). Backups in Windows can suffer from Windows power management of UsB ports (selective suspend) which can vary not just from the user settings, but also depending upon AC or battery power.