Approving drivers that do not have a trusted certificate
If a device driver package is not signed with a trusted certificate then the user installing the driver needs administrative privileges to be able to complete the installation. You can allow ordinary users (non-administrator user accounts) to install specific drivers that do not have a trusted digital signature by adding them into the driver store. The driver store is a protected area that contains device drivers’ packages that have been approved for installation on the computer. Sometimes, this process is known as staging a driver package.
- Log on to the computer with an administrator account
- Copy the driver package to a folder on your hard disk ex: c:\mydrivers – make sure that the package includes the driver file ex: mydriver.inf
- Open a command prompt window from the Start\Search text box
- Type pnputil -a c:\mydrivers\mydriver.inf (set your actual path and driver name)
- If you trust this driver, click Install in the Windows Security dialog box to add this driver to the Trusted Publishers certificate store
- The PnPUtil reports a published name (oem<number>.inf) that Windows 7 assigns to this package in the driver store. Keep a note of this name in case you need to remove this driver later on. You can use pnputil.exe -e to view all driver package names.
