Add Drivers to The Driver Queue - Warnings and errors?

[PlateauRealm]

Scenario Setup:
I have NTLite installed on my ACER Desktop.
I am using NTLite on my ACER Desktop to create an edit image for a future boot installation of Win11 24H2 to my ASUS Laptop.
I have the same Win11 24H2 build on both my ACER Desktop and ASUS laptop (26100.3624).
My ASUS is installed and configured with all the programs and apps that I will later re-install following the Win11 boot re-installation.
My ASUS laptop and ACER Desktop are both up to date with all the Microsoft updates available.

I have used DISM to backup all the ASUS drivers. Does DISM backup includes all drivers including Windows original installation drivers?
DISM export driver operation created 35 drivers in the backup.
I have also used Disk Genius Pro on my ASUS laptop to backup all the ASUS drivers. I have opted to have Disk Genius Pro include the Windows Original Drivers.
Disk Genius creates 149 drivers in the backup.
I have copied each of the backups from my ASUS laptop into separate directories on my ACER desktop.

If I Add and Subscribe to the directory containing the 149 Disk Genius drivers backup, only 30 of the Disk Genius drivers appear in the driver queue. NTLite pops up a Warnings and errors window listing that all the other 119 drivers are existing items. (in the Host ACER machine?) Why? These are ASUS drivers I imported for integration into the edit image build. I do not need or want the ACER drivers added to the build.
If I Add and Subscribe to the directory containing the 35 DISM drivers backup, all 35 are listed in the driver queue and NO Warnings and errors pop up occurs.

What am I not understanding here? It appears that NTLite is not allowing the full 149 Disk Genius drivers to appear in the driver queue. Is NTLite relying on the Host machine to provide the other 119 drivers? Or, is NTLite warning me that I cannot add drivers that already exist in the Host machine? I do not want the ACER Host machine to participate in providing drivers to the edit image build. I need only the ASUS drivers that I add to the Driver queue to be included in the ASUS Windows installation edit image I am creating.

 

[garlin]

Scenario Setup:
I have used DISM to backup all the ASUS drivers. Does DISM backup includes all drivers including Windows original installation drivers?

No. DISM or pnputil can only export or import 3rd-party drivers, which they rename as "oem[N].inf". DISM cannot be used to modify the native drivers included in your Windows release.

If I Add and Subscribe to the directory containing the 149 Disk Genius drivers backup, only 30 of the Disk Genius drivers appear in the driver queue. NTLite pops up a Warnings and errors window listing that all the other 119 drivers are existing items. (in the Host ACER machine?)

There's two ways to add drivers to any image. The more traditional method is to manually specify a driver folder, which is recursively scanned for INF files, and all discovered drivers are imported. Whenever there's a duplicate driver, NTLite flags a warning and skips over it.

By subscribing to a driver folder, you're asking NTLite to automatically import drivers from a folder cache whenever an image is processed.

Why? These are ASUS drivers I imported for integration into the edit image build. I do not need or want the ACER drivers added to the build.
If I Add and Subscribe to the directory containing the 35 DISM drivers backup, all 35 are listed in the driver queue and NO Warnings and errors pop up occurs.

What am I not understanding here? It appears that NTLite is not allowing the full 149 Disk Genius drivers to appear in the driver queue. Is NTLite relying on the Host machine to provide the other 119 drivers? Or, is NTLite warning me that I cannot add drivers that already exist in the Host machine? I do not want the ACER Host machine to participate in providing drivers to the edit image build. I need only the ASUS drivers that I add to the Driver queue to be included in the ASUS Windows installation edit image I am creating.

In this case, because you're targeting different PC's with a specific install image, it's better not to use Add & Subscribe. Subscriptions are global to any image you load, it's not linked on a per-image basis.

Also if you are reloading an image which already has all or some of the same drivers, a new attempt to add duplicate drivers will cause warnings and be skipped over.

 

[PlateauRealm]

Apparently, driver backup utilities such as Driver Genius do not make a distinction between invalid driver packages and duplicate driver packages.
Driver Genius removes invalid driver packages but not duplicate drivers.
I did discover a github app in development called Driver Store Explorer which appears to safely remove old drivers.
I quess that my best course of action is to run DISM on my fully installed and updated ASUS machine, to create a backup of all non-Microsoft original drivers (third-party drivers only) and add only these drivers to the edit image driver queue.

 

[garlin]

DriverStore Explorer (RAPR) is a well regarded tool for reviewing installed drivers, and safely removing unused files. I think the export driver feature is a relatively new addition.

Instead of DISM, just run this PowerShell command in W10/11:

powershell -C Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination C:\Temp\Drivers

 

[PlateauRealm]

The powershell command produces the same named driver backup folders as does DISM.

I suppose that I can continue to use Driver Genius and just allow NTLite to separate out the outdated duplicate drivers. The value here is that DG provides easily recognizable folder-named driver backups instead of the obscurely folder-named DISM or Powershell driver backups.

What criteria does NTLite use to determine duplicate drivers? I assume that it compares version numbers of similarly named INF files and allows only the latest driver version number INF into the driver integration queue.

 

[garlin]

What criteria does NTLite use to determine duplicate drivers? I assume that it compares version numbers of similarly named INF files and allows only the latest driver version number INF into the driver integration queue.

+nuhi