What are netimm.PNF and netxe32.PNF?

Question

What are netimm.PNF and netxe32.PNF? What are they used for? Also, please tell me about .PNF files in general.

Answer 1

PNF files are compiled versions of INF files used for software & driver setup.

Extract from filext.com:

Windows (Precompiled Setup Information) by Microsoft Corporation A precompiled INF file. Windows creates a PNF file for each INF file to facilitate efficient processing. If a PNF file does not exist, Setup generates one for the INF file. The identifying characters used for this association are - Hex: 01 01

By examining the netimm.PNF file itself (or rather the non-compiled .INF version) we can see the following details:

IBMDevice         = "IBM USB Remote NDIS Network Device"

Unfortunately I don't have netxe32.INF on my system, but a little Googling finds me this:

Intel(R) 10 Gigabit XF/AT Server Adapters 9/30/2010

This package is a in-box Driver Pack in the category Net. The name of the package as it > appears on disk and for use with some command-line tools is WinEmb-INF-netxe32.

So it is highly likely that this is part of the drivers for an Intel 10 Gigabit XF/AT Server Adapter