How to automate driver update from a folder for all devices on Windows?

Question

I have a Dell Laptop, and the drivers has been installed with Windows 7.

I downloaded a package with specific and updated drivers. I would like to install all drivers found in this folder.

In the device manager I do a right click on a device and select "update driver software...", then I select "Browse my computer for driver software".

Can I do this automatically for all device? Because it's too long to do this on each.

I looked at this question Automatic driver search & update on Windows? but I don't want to install another software. So my question is: Is it possible to do this automatically with Windows 7?

Update : Windows 7 haven't this option.
So I update my question to know if it's possible to install driver with command line ?
Maybe with a script, can we execute the command for all devices ?

I don't need to do this often or on many computers.

Answer 1

It depends on how the drivers are packaged.

However, in general, you can right-click on the .inf files in the driver folder and install them that way instead of going through the device manager. It should be noted that this doesn't always work due to the way the drivers are packaged but it will normally work.

To go further than this would require a fair bit more work and wouldn't be worth it unless you are doing a lot of updates (e.g. updating them all each month or more often or updating many computers). If you are, update your question and I will expand the answer.

UPDATE: To install using a batch script, the following command format is used:

rundll32 syssetup,SetupInfObjectInstallAction DefaultInstall 128 .\<file>.inf 

Just replace <file> with the appropriate file name. You can do a number of these or even create a loop to walk through all of the .inf files in a folder though I don't really recommend this as there may be plenty of occasions when you don't want to or indeed shouldn't install all of the available drivers. So if you automate too far, you would need to remember to remove or rename inf files before running. Given the use case, it is better to copy/paste the appropriate lines.