Windows 11 + NTLite + Fog Projects

[gaptoothgonni]

Aloha everyone, seeking help here

I have a computer where I installed Debian 12, which I’d like to use as a server where I use Fog Project to deploy a Windows 11 ISO made through NTLite.

The Debian pc is configured with a private static IP and serve also as DHCP.
We uploaded the image on Fog website and in the iPXE Menu Customization page we defined some parameters, as below:

kernel http://${fog-ip}/wimboot gui
#initrd http://{fog-ip}/install.bat install.bat
#initrd http://{fog-ip}/winpeshl.ini winpeshl.ini
initrd http://{fog-ip}/Windows/11Pro24H2/boot/bcd BCD
initrd http://{fog-ip}/Windows/11Pro24H2/boot/boot.sdi boot.sdi
initrd http://{fog-ip}/Windows/11Pro24H2/sources/boot.wim boot.wim
boot

At this point, everything seems to work fine as the pc where I want to deploy my ISO is connected to the Debian pc server.
It boots correctly and it seems to load the Windows installation.
Only thing: it comes the part where I should be able to select the disks where installing my ISO but I get an error back.

It says:

**LOAD DRIVER

A required driver is missing for your computer. It could be a driver for DVD, USB or hard disk. If you have a USB flash drive, a CD or a DVD with the driver, please insert it now.
Note: If the Windows installation media is in the DVD drive or on a USB drive, you can safely remove it for this step.**

With a colleague we tried everything, but we get back always the same error.

If anyone have any idea what could this be, it’s much much appreciated.

Thanks!

[JJ Fullmer]

@gaptoothgonni So while this can be done, FOG is designed to capture an image from where windows is already installed and sysprep’d, not to boot to a wim. Of course it can be done, but I just wanted to make sure that’s clarified.

All that said, doing it that way may or may not get past your problem, because it may just be a client pc bios setting.
If you manually boot to that iso on a usb on that pc, does it see the disks?
That message generally means it’s missing the storage driver.
Does the host you’re trying to deploy to have VMD/RAID enabled in the bios settings?
It is possible, and not even that hard if you’re already customizing the iso, to add the storage driver to the wim. I’ve never used NTLite, but in powershell you can mount the wim of the image with Mount-WindowsImage and use Add-WindowsDriver to add the inf you need to that image. You probably need to mount the boot.wim and setup.wim images and add it there too as you’re booting to the boot.wim and using winpe. This page might also be helpful https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/media-dynamic-update#update-windows-installation-media

I would also say, if you’re going this route, to consider making a autounattend.xml if NTLite doesn’t do that, as it can automate the install of windows and then have it kick things off into provisioning. We customize an iso like this and use it to create and capture our base image in FOG.

I got a little off topic there, TL;DR
Make sure the disks are seen if you boot to the iso manually, if they are not, then adjust the bios/uefi settings to use AHCI mode for disks as it works universally. If the disks are seen when manually booting, then something else is causing it not to see the local hardware.

[gaptoothgonni]

@JJ-Fullmer Hi! Thanks for your reply.
I’ll be short on your answer but please let me know if there’s something more I can tell.

-Yes, via USB it works correctly and boot the iso. The problem is via PXE.
-Yes, the BIOS settings are correct and the disks are already on AHCI mode.
-Yes, we did generated the autounattend.xml file using NTLite
-We thought the drivers needed would already be in the boot.wim file, so it should not be necessary to add them via NTLite.

Let me know if we are doing something wrong.
Thanks,
Lorenzo.

[JJ Fullmer]

@gaptoothgonni Well darn, have you tried booting with snponly.efi instead of ipxe.efi? It wouldn’t make a ton of sense if that worked but something else to try.
If it’s booting to the wim though, it should just be getting the drivers from the wim unless ipxe somehow changes how they’re presented, which I don’t think it does but that’s also the only difference between where it’s working. Might be worth looking at https://github.com/ipxe/ipxe/discussions and seeing if anyone has had similar issues. Since you’re just using FOG to create the ipxe boot menu, it’s not likely anything within FOG that’s causing this. You could try ipxe’s pre-built boot files, though they won’t have the embedded fog stuff https://boot.ipxe.org/ but maybe will make a difference. There’s other ipxe efi files you can try too, or try an older one ( I think we still include some legacy ones in /tftpboot)