Install device driver silently on Windows XP

Is there a way to programmatically install device driver silently without cat file and without connecting the device on Windows Xp?

I'm using DriverPackageInstall function from Windows Driver Kit. And I can install driver only if device is attached. In other case I get an error: ERROR_NO_SUCH_DEVINST. But that method works fine with Windows Vista.

Another prob开发者_如何学编程lem is warning dialog that asks user to continue or stop installation because cat file is missing . It shows on both OSes.

Any ideas?

---

You're not going to get past the signing prompt, as this is baked pretty far into windows, but there is a tool in the DDK called devinst that works well for device installations.

There's Source Code included with it.

---

The only way to avoid any UI interaction caused by your driver being unsigned is to hackishly preinstall the driver by modifying the registry directly.

Yes, it can be done. You'd have to modify the ACLs on the HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum registry key run as SYSTEM (by installing yourself as a service or using Sysinternals psexec -s), and add all the registry keys which Windows device installation would usually add - on your own. This will only work if you can predict precisely what your device's Device Instance ID would be -- e.g. in case of a USB device, the precise port it'd be connected to etc.

This is hacky, but the result would be the device being essentially "preinstalled". It'll be a lot of work, and it'll break on Windows Vista.

Microsoft really wants you to go the WHQL way on Windows XP, sorry :(