Importing Drivers
SCCM defines a driver as an INF file plus its associated content. When a driver is first imported we do a check to see if the exact same driver (e.g. same INF file and content) has already been imported at the site and prevent it from being imported. However, if there are any differences then the metadata is read from the INF file (including name, manufacturer, supported operating systems, etc.) and a new driver object is created.
It is not uncommon for hardware vendors to package different INF files for each operating system they support in the same directory. When this happens, SCCM will create a driver object for each INF file but it is smart enough to only keep a single copy of the content. Since the default name of a driver comes from the supported hardware list in the INF file, each of these driver objects will likely get the same default name even though they support different operating systems (to see if this is the case, check out “Applicability” tab on the Driver’s preview pane).
There are a few things you can do about this:
- SCCM generates a default name for a driver based on the hardware that it supports – but you can change this in the driver’s properties screen.
- Add additional columns to the Drivers view so that you can tell the difference between the drivers:
- Select the Drivers node in the Admin UI
- Run the ViewAdd/Remove columns… action
- Select additional columns to display (for example “INF File”)
- Ignore it – Since SCCM automatically determines driver applicability at deployment time you don’t really need to worry about the specific drivers in the driver catalog.
After importing a driver you can review the driver catalog matching reports (“Driver catalog matching report for a specific computer” and “Driver catalog matching report for a specific collection”) which use hardware inventory information to predict what drivers match devices in your environment to give you a better idea of how the drivers will be used.
Contributed by Brett Flegg