How to prevent Windows 10 from downloading drivers during OS Deploy

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Summary

? This article explains how to prevent Windows from downloading drivers from the Microsoft Update Catalog during OS Deployment.

Synopsis

Since Windows 10 (1607) the operating system tries to download and update/install the appropriate drivers from the Microsoft Update Catalog. In some circumstances this behaviour is not wanted (e.g. because it causes a BSOD).

This article explains how to prevent Windows from downloading drivers from the Microsoft Update Catalog during OS Deployment. (Installing drivers from the Columbus DrvStore is not affected)

Discussion

Follow these steps:

1.Make a copy of your unattend.xml template (OSDepot\_defaults\windows\common) and place it into your OS release folder (or another folder of your preference)

2.Edit this unattend.xml and look for RunSynchronous

3.Add the following XML tag to your RunSynchronous tag (1x in x86 section, 1x in amd64 section)<RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add"> <Description>Disable automatic driver update</Description>
<Order>2</Order>
<Path>reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching /v SearchOrderConfig /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f</Path>
</RunSynchronousCommand>

4.Save the changes
5.Open the appropriate OS template and import the edited unattend.xml
6.If you have already be assigning a template to a device tick the "Use Template values" checkbox to load all settings again (you have to reconfigure the device after again)

Here the full section how it should look after adding the entries above

<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Deployment" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<RunSynchronous>
<RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
<Path>c:\asetup\osdeploy.exe</Path>
<WillReboot>Never</WillReboot>
<Order>1</Order>
<Description>Install Columbus OSDeploy Service</Description>
</RunSynchronousCommand>
<RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
<Description>Disable automatic driver update</Description>
<Order>2</Order>
<Path>reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching /v SearchOrderConfig /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f</Path>
</RunSynchronousCommand>
</RunSynchronous>
</component>
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Deployment" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<RunSynchronous>
<RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
<Path>c:\asetup\osdeploy.exe</Path>
<WillReboot>Never</WillReboot>
<Order>1</Order>
<Description>Install Columbus OSDeploy Service</Description>
</RunSynchronousCommand>
<RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
<Description>Disable automatic driver update</Description>
<Order>2</Order>
<Path>reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching /v SearchOrderConfig /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f</Path>
</RunSynchronousCommand>
</RunSynchronous>
</component>

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Products

C7

How to prevent Windows 10 from downloading drivers during OS Deploy