Installing a .inf file using a windows batch file

Question

When you right click on a .inf file you have an option to \"Install\". I want to install a .inf file from the command line using a batch file. What is the \"right\" way to do th

Answer 1

rem tested/works

:inf
ver | findstr /il "Version 6." > nul 
if %ERRORLEVEL%==0 goto :vista

:xp
start/wait rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 4 %_%
goto :eof
:vista
%SystemRoot%\System32\InfDefaultInstall.exe "%_%"

:eof

Answer 2

Should works on any Windows system that has IE 4.0+:

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection <file.inf>,DefaultInstall

Answer 3

You can find the command when looking at the HKCR\inffile\shell\Install\command registry key. On Windows XP this is

%SystemRoot%\System32\rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %1

on Windows Vista and later this would be

%SystemRoot%\System32\InfDefaultInstall.exe "%1"

To use the batch file across several Windows versions you would need some trickery. You could use reg.exe to query for the key and try parsing the output (I didn't find a quick way of getting only the value from reg). If you know what platforms you're running on you could also hard-code the command lines and switch according to the Windows version (which would need another hack to find that out. %OS% doesn't tell you more than "Windows NT", unfortunately.).