How to add Drivers to Windows Installation ISO – Windows 10 & 11
I recently had a customer, who had bought a new laptop. but the newest Windows 11 image could not recognize any network adapter, so we could not sign in with the Microsoft Account.
Here is a guide, how to add the missing driver(s) during the setup, to the Windows Installation ISO.
In this example i have a brand new Lenovo L15 (20U3004GFR). As seen in the image below, the Windows 11 21H2 Image only recognize the Lan adapter. Let’s make a new image that recognizes the Wi-Fi adapter too.
Windows 11 Install screen on Lenovo. Only shows the Lan Adapter
Prerequisites
Driver(s)
Download required drivers from manufacturer’s site
Windows Assessment and Deployment kit
You can download it from this link; Download Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Microsoft.com)
Windows 10 or 11 ISO file
You can download the latest Windows 11 at this link from Microsoft; Download Windows 11 (microsoft.com)
Disk space
15GB free disk space (after download of the ISO file)
Bootable USB creater tool
You can use Rufus, a free tool Rufus – Create bootable USB drives the easy way
Driver(s)
Create an folder on your C-Drive called Driver (C:\driver) and export the driver/drivers you wan’t to add to the image, to this folder.
Windows ISO file
Create an folder on your C-Drive called work (C:\work)
Create an folder on your C-Drive called iso (C:\iso)
Mount the ISO file in Windows (double click on the file, or right click and choose Mount)
Open the mounted ISO from explore, then select all files (Ctrl+A) and Copy it (Ctrl+C)
Open the iso folder (C:\iso) and paste the files to this folder (Ctrl+V)
Mount the Windows ISO
Open elevated PowerShell, (Search for PowerShell in your start menu, and right click and choose Run as administrator)
Type:
for Windows 11:
Dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:C:\iso\Sources\install.wim
for Windows 10:
Dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:C:\iso\Sources\install.esd
Now we have to find the index number of the OS edition. In this example we have a Wndows 11 (21H2) ISO, I will use PRO edition to add drivers to, so let’s go for the index number 6
Now we have to mount the image of your preferred Windows edition (in this example Windows 11 Pro) using it’s index number
Type:
Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:C:\iso\Sources\install.wim /Index:6 /MountDir:C:\work
Wait for the Deployment Image Servicing and Managment tool to complete
Add driver(s) to the image
Open the Driver folder (C:\driver) if you not already have enabled file extensions in explore, then do it
Find the .inf file(s) of your driver(s) in this example let’s take mtkwl6ex.inf (MediaTek Wi-Fi 6/6E Wireless LAN Card driver)
Type:
dism /Image:C:\work /Add-Driver /Driver:C:\Driver\mtkwl6ex.inf
If the driver is unsigned, use the following command insted : dism /Image:C:\work /Add-Driver /Driver:C:\Driver\mtkwl6ex.inf /ForceUnsigned
if you want to add additional drivers, repeat previous step and change the Driver,
Or you can use this command for adding all the drivers in the folder and subfolders: dism /Image:C:\work /Add-Driver /Driver:C:\Driver /Recurse
When all drivers are added, we have to commit the changes to the Windows image type;
dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:C:\work /Commit
Windows Deployment Tools
We now need the Deployment tool, so go on and install it
Run the Install file for the Windows Deployment Tools (link in the top)
Click Next
Click Next
Click Accept
We only need the Deployment Tool, so remove the other checkmarks, and click Install
Click Yes to the UAC box
Click Close
Open the Deployment and Imaging tool Enciroment as Administrator from your start menu
Click Yes to the UAC Box
Now we have to create the new ISO file
Type this command;
oscdimg.exe -m -o -u2 -udfver102 -bootdata:2#p0,e,bc:\iso\boot\etfsboot.com#pEF,e,bc:\iso\efi\microsoft\boot\efisys.bin c:\iso c:\Win.iso
Now we have the final updated ISO file at our C-Drive called Win.iso
Optional: You can now delete the folders; C:\Driver, C:\iso & C:\work
Our final ISO file, with alternative driver added
Create Bootable USB Stick
Final thing we have to do, is to write the iso file to an usb stick
In this guide I use the free tool Rufus
Open Rufus
Choose you USB drive in the top drop down menu
Choose our new Iso file at the Select box
Click START
Click OK
Now the Bootable USB Stick is Ready
Let’s Test
Now the Windows 11 Installer recognize the Wireless lan adapter too.
Thanks for a great tutorial! Easy to follow and worked perfectly!
Glad it helped 🙂
Thanks for these detailed instructions!
Used it on a Intel NUC 12 Extreme, where I first had the same problem with no network.
First I found a bypass – pressing Shift + F10, and entering the command: OOBE\BYPASSNRO
But I wanted a more clean install without any tricks that might go away in later versions.
So this was the way!
I was unable to follow the instructions for windows 11 as it doesn’t seem to include an install.wim file. It does have an install.esd so I could get the info from that but was unable to mount it.
Don’t know if the iso has changed since you wrote this.
I missed the important detail that you need to download the ISO file from the link provided. I’d downloaded the ISO using the Media Creation Tool.
When you use the Media Creation Tool, it includes a install.esd instead of install.wim, and can’t be mounted.
Hello,
i have installed Windows 11 Pro
now i need to generalize for different hardware
i have used “SYSPREP”
but i need to ADD EXTRA DRIVER because destination computer had NVMe hard disk
and Windows don not boot
how can i do to inject driver on my installed Windows first to genaralize with SYSPREP?
Thanks
Brilliant tutorial. I bought an Intel NUC 12 Extreme and needed the LAN drivers during setup.
Found this in a dire Emergency, great Tutorial and works brillaintly
Great tutorial mate worked perfectly
Brand new laptop just out the box… thought ill twat it with a fresh install to find no wireless card and “of course” laptops don’t need network cards these days ..
thanks for putting in the time to posting the this
hemp
Hi hi – I have a Lenovo Yoga machine that I really need to run Win11 Pro. Using standard USB setup / boot I get no WiFi so I followed your instruction to the letter but… I still don’t see the WiFi.
I reinstall the laptop with Win 11 home and checked what driver is used for the WiFi to make sure I was using the right one… and used the “Netwtw6e.inf” file in my second a tempt. But still no luck getting the WiFi to show up.
Any other driver I might need to get the WiFi up and running… like Bluetooth?
If you’re addressing the issue on a single device, I suggest downloading the driver, saving it to a USB stick, and then launching it during the OOBE by accessing the command line with fn+shift+f10.
For deployment scenarios where injecting the driver into a bootable device is necessary as per the guide, I recommend extracting the drivers from a known working driver executable or setup file, identifying the drivers folder, and recursively adding all subfolders as per the author’s instructions. Initially, I included the equivalent of “Netwtw6e.inf” in my initial attempts, which didn’t work. Adding all relevant driver subfolders recursively and ensuring they installed without errors (which took some time) made a significant difference.
This advice may be late for your current issue but could be helpful for other readers.
Baie Baie dankie. Fokken awesome help !!!! Got Win11Pro , did not see NVMe after clone …. Lenovo 8th gen i5 to Lenovo 11th Gen i3 ….eeeshhh I struggled today ….
oscdimg.exe -m -o -u2 -udfver102 -bootdata:2#p0,e,bc:\iso\boot\etfsboot.com#pEF,e,bc:\iso\efi\microsoft\boot\efisys.bin c:\iso c:\Win.iso
is this one correct?
I follwed your guide for win10, but still missing the new drivers. In my view, the new drivers are integrated into environment of c:\work\ and not in c:\iso.
It is correct. When you do the /commit, it writes everything to the c:\iso folder
This is the best tutorial I’ve found online. Great work!
Thank you this worked fine for me 🙂
Dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:C:\iso\Sources\install.esd
Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:C:\iso\Sources\install.wim /Index:6 /MountDir:C:\work
How did it became .wim???
you are missing this line where you esport the esd to wim
dism /export-image /SourceImageFile:f:/sources/install.esd /SourceIndex:1 /DestinationImageFile:install.wim /Compress:max /CheckIntegrity
I was looking for a way to make a bootable USB with network drivers for Surface Go 4, since it doesn’t have a Wi-Fi driver after a official Windows 11 Microsoft media creation tool installation.
Since Surface Go tablets need a .msi driver package installation I tried to add all Surface drivers to the image, which worked perfectly, but when I try to boot the Surface from the USB, I get the error:
Couldn’t find a bootable operating system. Check the Boot configuration to try to fix this. (For more info,visit https://aka.ms/surfacebooterror
Any idea how to make the bootable usb work with the created Win.iso?
There is a much simpler way. Create a bootable USB disk with the Windows Media Creation tool and apply the first steps above with boot.wim and stop at the unmount step.
The image number is 2, so you can skip the first command if youi want.
Just put all your drivers in one directory and run the install , update and unmout-commit steps.
Yopur USB is updated.
I kind of get what you’re trying to say, there should be a way to apply this directly to a bootable USB. But your explanation is WAY too high level for anyone who actually needs this page.
Can you maybe elaborate a bit, so people who don’t already know how to do this can figure out how to do it your way?
How to put a drive name on each drive? This link is very helpful to us.
After downloading the drivers, I noticed that many of the INF files weren’t supported by the model I needed. To address this, I copied all the extracted drivers to the Windows installation USB and initiated the installation process. When the installation reached the stage where I could format/choose the drive, I clicked on “load drivers” and browsed through each driver folder to identify the correct INF file. Only the correct INF files were embedded into the installation.
This worked perfectly with me.
Kim, first of all, a great piece of work! Very informative, but as a simple unix guy, I am still a little bit puzzled. As “sapabg” suggests, you should convert (for windows 10?) your install.esd to install.wim in order to be able to mount it to the work directory, as you can’t mount the esd-file. As a result, we now have three files: install.esd, boot.wim and install.wim in our c:\iso directory. How does this effect the installation media you create with oscdimg? Should one delete a file?
May I suggest you eleborate a little bit more in this fine piece of work?
Thank you sooooo much, just fixed the not driver found error with this, saved my dayyyy <3