Managing Drivers for Macrium Reflect Rescue Media

Overriding Existing Drivers

By default, the Macrium Rescue Media Builder will attempt to use the most up-to-date and appropriate device driver for the hardware in the rescue media.  There are edge cases where this driver may not be the most appropriate choice, and it's necessary to override the default behavior. For example, the host USB driver might not function correctly in Windows PE, or the host driver might be a better choice than the WinPE/WinRE driver that's selected by default. 

The 'Override' dropdown menu lets you override the default driver choice.  The selected override is displayed in the 'Override' column in the device list.

To specify a driver override, select the device in the device table and then select the 'Override' button.

The following options can be specified and will be displayed in the 'Override' column:

Manually Adding Drivers to the Rescue Media

Acquiring the Driver Files

If a hardware device does not have compatible drivers in WinPE/WinRE and a compatible driver cannot be copied from the operating system where the rescue media is being created (e.g., the rescue media is being used for a bare metal restore to a second computer), then some manual driver management may be required. 

Drivers can generally be downloaded from the device manufacturer's website. If the relevant driver cannot be found, we recommend contacting the device manufacturer directly.

Drivers are made up of the following files:

• .inf file - This contains a description of the driver and its associated files. It will include a list of hardware it supports and what operating systems and CPU types it supports.
• .sys file - This is the driver software.
• .cat file - This is a list of included files with their cryptographic hashes or thumbprints.

It may also contain supplementary files containing localized text, etc.

Device manufacturers may distribute their driver files in different formats. If the manufacturer has provided an executable file, the following methods may assist in retrieving the driver files from the executable file:

7-Zip

Using third-party tools, it is possible to open the archive of the executable and manually extract files from inside it. One such tool is 7-Zip a free, open-source archiving tool.

In the example below, 7-Zip (https://www.7-zip.org) has been used to open the archive of a Dell Network Adapter to extract the relevant driver files. This will allow the deployment media to communicate with the network adapter.

Once you have extracted the installer, you can find where the driver files are located. Depending on how the installer is constructed, it may be necessary to extract further files. For example, driver files may be located in a cabinet file (an archive file format), within the executable.

Temp Folder

The second way to extract the driver files from the installer is by running the installer. When the installer is running, these files are often stored in the %Temp% folder.

You can access this folder by pressing the Windows + R keys. This will open the ‘Run’ search menu. In the search box, enter %Temp% and press the 'Enter' key.

By checking the folders located in %Temp%, you can often locate these driver files.

Adding the Driver Files to the Rescue Media

Once the relevant driver files have been downloaded, they should be moved to the relevant subfolder in the C:\Boot\Macrium folder. Which subfolder the driver files should be placed in will depend on the version of WinPE/WinRE that is being used to create the rescue media. Below are the relevant folders for each version of the rescue media:

Once the driver files have been placed in the relevant folder, the rescue media should be recreated. The driver will then be included in the recreated rescue media.