Certain Dell models are not enjoying my Universal image
-
@george1421 What is MDT that you are referring to?
-
Now I can tell you in concept what I do. I go to the dell site and download the cab files for each model I want to support. Those cab files contains all of the drivers for that specific model. I use 7Zip and extract the driver files from the cab file. Through the magic of a bash shell script I push the contents of that exact hardwares expanded cab file to the target computer post image deployment. When the sysprepp’d image boots for the first time it finds all of its drivers in the c:\drivers folder.
-
@mlnancejr8808 said:
@george1421 What is MDT that you are referring to?
Microsoft Deployment Tools. It is a free tool from MS used to build reference images. Using the lite touch method I build a new reference image every quarter. I just launch the MDT deployment and come back a few hours later with a reference image ready to sysprep.
-
@mlnancejr8808 To do the C:\Drivers folder and update the registry you don’t need MDT. You can do this manually or via a cmd file when you build your reference image in Audit mode. I love MDT because our reference image is exactly the same every time we create it.
If you were going the MDT route to build your reference image I would also say to include the WinPE drivers right in the MDT reference image.
-
@george1421 The only Drivers I am seeing for the Op755 is the WinPE Cab…will that work?
-
@mlnancejr8808 said:
@george1421 The only Drivers I am seeing for the Op755 is the WinPE Cab…will that work?
Yeah, that’s pretty old. Its not certified for Win7 only XP. With that said, I would bet the windows built in drivers will work for that. Or just load the 780 drivers for Win7. Since this until is about 10 years old, all you can do is wing it.
-
@george1421 HAHAHAH! Thats awesome cause I have about 350 units Im gonna have to wing it on!
-
@mlnancejr8808 Make one work, then all will work.
-
@george1421 very true, very true. Thank you for all the help! Gonna dig my heals in on this.
-
@george1421 Does HP have somewhere to get the CAB files as well? We unfortunately are bit of a mixed environment. I have HP 6200s and 6300s that the image DOES work on but we have some older machines, I havent tested yet that I wanna be prepared for.
-
@mlnancejr8808 You can extract the files from the exe’s with the /a command switch if I’m not mistaken.
-
@Quazz said:
@mlnancejr8808 You can extract the files from the exe’s with the /a command switch if I’m not mistaken.
Yes it does, I use 7zip since its part of our base image, its much faster than the expand, and if necessary you can dive in and extract a specific file. I’m a bit lazy that way.
-
@mlnancejr8808 said:
@george1421 Does HP have somewhere to get the CAB files as well? We unfortunately are bit of a mixed environment. I have HP 6200s and 6300s that the image DOES work on but we have some older machines, I havent tested yet that I wanna be prepared for.
I don’t have to support HP so I can’t say. A quick google search found this:
x64 http://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HP_Driverpack_Matrix_x64.html
x86 http://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HP_Driverpack_Matrix_x86.htmlI can tell you that if HP has .exe installers for the drivers you will need to expand them so windows can see the inf files. The windows sysprep driver installer does not expand .exe files.
-
@george1421 I just dug through one of the driver packs from HP and they look inline with what Dell is providing.
One last bit of information. If you place the files in c:\drivers the windows installer will search all sub folders in that directory structure until it finds a driver that matches the vendor and device code. So you can setup a pretty complex directory structure under that c:\drivers root folder.
-
@george1421 So I cleaned up my drivers folder and created the C:\Drivers directory. Added the registry piece as well. I used the CAB files needed and I am still getting the “Windows Setup could not configure Windows to run in this computer’s hardware.”
-
@mlnancejr8808 I’ve only run into this error (could not configure) when certain software is an issue. The driver store might cause problems, but most of the rest of the time it’s some software. In my case it was installed antivirus software we had just updated. Reverting the update fixed the configure issue for us.
-
@Tom-Elliott I did just check installed programs and somehow drivers for the synaptics touchpad and another touchpad driver installed directly. I am going to remove those and then sysprep and upload again then try it.
-
@mlnancejr8808 Don’t forget about my original post. The only time I see this error is when a driver fails to install.
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6876/certain-dell-models-are-not-enjoying-my-universal-image/11
If you have the computer reboot your install will be broken. But if you open the command window and start up regedit and change that registry flag, then reboot the computer the installation should complete and give you a desktop. Once you are at the desktop then you can start looking through the install log files to see what went wrong. Its been so long ago now when I caused that error I can’t tell you root cause.
-
@george1421 So I’m not sure what fixed it but I cleaned up the Drivers, combed through my unattend.xml to make sure it was correct and removed a couple of erroneous drivers that were installed, sysprepped and uploaded the image and imaged a 755 this morning without issue!
-
@mlnancejr8808 Great job!! Now you have a solid foundation to move forward with.
Marking as solved