Server Core and Drivers
Following on from my comments the other day about Core this entry will look at drivers which as you can imagine without a device driver GUI to install and inspect drivers can be a somewhat confusing endeavor.
Commands I would recommend you learn are
For example I will look at installing the VMware network driver which if like me you use VMware on a regular basis is an essential since Microsoft removed the driver capable of accessing the emulated interface in Vista and Server 2008.
First off choose the install VMware Tools from the VM menu which will connect the tools ISO to the CD drive of the guest VM. If you want to install the VMware Tools in total then all you need do is run D:\Setup.exe and the graphical installer will run just fine.
In many cases I just want the network to work and not have to deal with the occasional problems I am getting on subsequent reboots with the VMware Tools installed. In this case I want to add and install the relevant drivers to the system using pnputil and the -a and -i options respectively pointing at the vmware-nic.inf on the tools CD.
pnputil -i -a "D:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\Drivers\vmxnet\win2k\vmware-nic.inf"
Now if you run driverquery you will see the vmxnet driver listed at the end of the list.
The same basic principle applies to adding and installing other drivers.
I am very lucky and work with one of the best Windows 'builds' professionals I know and quite often take for granted the easy access to obscure knowledge on BDD 2007 that I have for some of the more annoying features that manifest on occasions but I would recommend it to anyone as the easiest way to deploy Vista or Server 2008 including Core for the GUI interface to adding drivers and additional software if nothing else. Check it out and setup a Windows Deployment Services for a much easier deployment story.