Is editing a driver's *.inf possible?

[Kerlingen]

Originally Posted by bongos_man

since the driver for your PCI\002 device comes with a signed .cat, it is actually not boot-critical (as it would require an embedded signature), but rather a pnp driver;

The driver is for a RAID controller and, like I wrote, driver.sys is signed both by the vendor and by Microsoft.

i would suggest you start by trying to get windows to successfully install and load your driver on an already running system.

I can't install Windows if it doesn't detect any harddisk which could be used for installation.
If I install it with the default Microsoft driver and install the vendor driver on the running system, Windows will unload its own driver, which leads to an instant BSOD since the boot device becomes inaccessible.
I can only load the vendor driver during Windows setup, since WinPE is running from a RAM drive and losing access to the harddisk will not crash it.

[bongos_man]

Originally Posted by Kerlingen

The driver is for a RAID controller and, like I wrote, driver.sys is signed both by the vendor and by Microsoft.

thank you for the clarification. distribution via windows update also, if i recall correctly, requires whql, so i figured the driver had gone through that process. i apologize for my tone; i should not have assumed that you might have not known about this detail (microsoft hardly documents it themselves).

I can't install Windows if it doesn't detect any harddisk which could be used for installation.
If I install it with the default Microsoft driver and install the vendor driver on the running system, Windows will unload its own driver, which leads to an instant BSOD since the boot device becomes inaccessible.
I can only load the vendor driver during Windows setup, since WinPE is running from a RAM drive and losing access to the harddisk will not crash it.

is it mandatory that the windows in-box driver for your PCI\001 be working right now? in other words, can you add the vendor driver via the procedure outlined here for adding boot-critical drivers to winPE, install to a drive on the now-visible PCI\002, then use this installation to begin with the process i outlined?

[Kerlingen]

I don't really need to integrate the drivers into Windows setup, I don't care if I need to manually load the drivers each time, I just need both of them to be loaded at the same time.

PCI\001 = SSD connected to AHCI controller
PCI\002 = HDDs connected to RAID controller

Windows will detect AHCI out of the box, but not the RAID controller. If I load the driver for the RAID controller, Windows will unload the AHCI driver (since the RAID driver.inf claims it would support the AHCI and the RAID DeviceIDs, but it only detects the RAID controller).

For obvious reasons I want to install Windows on the SSD and use the HDDs for data storage. Currently I can only use either SSD or HDDs, not both.

I deliberately asked an "unspecified" question starting the topic since I didn't want to inflate a bigger problem-complex which I already had reduced to one specific single problem.

[bongos_man]

Originally Posted by Kerlingen

I don't really need to integrate the drivers into Windows setup, I don't care if I need to manually load the drivers each time, I just need both of them to be loaded at the same time.

PCI\001 = SSD connected to AHCI controller
PCI\002 = HDDs connected to RAID controller

Windows will detect AHCI out of the box, but not the RAID controller. If I load the driver for the RAID controller, Windows will unload the AHCI driver (since the RAID driver.inf claims it would support the AHCI and the RAID DeviceIDs, but it only detects the RAID controller).

For obvious reasons I want to install Windows on the SSD and use the HDDs for data storage. Currently I can only use either SSD or HDDs, not both.

I deliberately asked an "unspecified" question starting the topic since I didn't want to inflate a bigger problem-complex which I already had reduced to one specific single problem.

you would need to get the drivers into windows setup somehow so that you don't get the bsod issue (because you'd install onto the raid controller to prevent it, do all this work, then reinstall onto the SSDs with the new driver running PCI\001), or, you can take advantage of this thread to modify the .inf to remove the listed support for PCI\001 from your driver. better move fast on that thread, by the way ;]