XP: Deploy an INF file Automatically

Contributed by davak May 27, 2004  
Tagged: Windows

This explains how to install an INF file from the command line.

Setup information files have the *.inf extension and are often used to install registry settings and device drivers. To manually install an INF file, the user can right-click and select install from the context menu.

However, you might want to be able to install the inf from a command-line. Here’s how:

rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 file_name.inf

[list]file_name.inf = file to install
132 = flag to ask the user before rebooting
DefaultInstall = name of the section to install