Some laptops cannot get past "Starting Windows"

Quazz

Possible causes (top of my head, could be slightly off):

Antivirus causing havok (unlikely since some computers work)

Drivers causing havok (likely, since it’s limited to certain models)

unattend.xml causing havok (possible, depending on how it’s configured)

mark.dangelo

@george1421 We are not quite sure how to inject the storage controllers in the master image. We looked for documentation to help with that but haven’t really found anything and are kind of fuzzy on the whole driver thing when it comes to fog . And yeah it just stops at starting windows forever.

Quazz

@mark.dangelo Did you use the /generalize switch when sysprepping ?

george1421

@mark.dangelo how do you create your master image?

Quazz brings up a good point about AV. Are you installing it in your master image or post imaging?

sarge_212

@george1421 thank you, I will certainly look into that on the Dell website, and post my findings. Appreciate it.

FoSTerCyber

I have ran into this before. The problem was that some of the settings in the BIOS were not the same as when the image was initially pulled. My issue was that the SATA settings on one was set to RAID and the other laptop was either set to ATA or AHCI. Hope this helps you.

sarge_212

Changing from RAID on in BIOS to AHCI fixed this issue for me. Thanks so much for the tip @FoSTerCyber !!

mark.dangelo

@Quazz Yes, we use the generalize switch. @george1421 No, we install the AV post imaging.

mark.dangelo

@FoSTerCyber said in Some laptops cannot get past "Starting Windows":

have ran into this before. The problem was that some of the settings in the BIOS were not the same as when the image was initially pulled. My issue was that the SATA settings on one was set to RAID and the other laptop was either set to ATA or AHCI. Hope this helps you.

Thanks for the suggestion! We create the image with-in VirtualBox, but have tried both settings and we are not configuring it for RAID.

Avaryan

Just for reference. I have Dell OptiPlex 7040’s and they’ve worked fine from FOG version 1.2.0 and higher.

I believe I may have had to change some BIOS settings before deploying to them the first time.

edit: Imaged 7040 with both Windows 7 and Windows 10. I’ll set one up and check the BIOS settings.
edit2: Here are the relevant BIOS settings on the OptiPlex 7040 that I think I changed (like a year ago).

Under System Configuration:

Integrated NIC
– Uncheck “Enable UEFI Network Stack” (this might be default)
– Select “Enabled w/PXE”
SATA Operation
– Select “RAID ON” (Default was either Disabled or AHCI)

I think that’s all I changed.

mark.dangelo

@george1421 I am not sure if I responded to your question, but we are creating a master 7 windows image on Virtual Box. Then running sysprep. We have no unattend or setupcomplete.cmd currently in place. I am leaning towards the problem being with Mass storage drivers or something driver related considering the fact that we have no driver install set-up it is currently all done after via a CD. Would this be helpful? Or do you guys have any other driver tutorials that would point us in the right direction?

Thanks!

george1421

@mark.dangelo That wiki is a bit old but still usable.

At my work we also develop our golden images on a vm, sysprep them and then capture with FOG. From there we use fog post install scripts to copy the appropriate drivers to the target computer during imaging. We previously instruct windows OOBE to look for drivers in a specific location when OOBE is running so the drivers get installed at that time. The system works pretty well. We support about 14 different hardware models in our fleet of computers (all Dell BTW).

mark.dangelo

@george1421 said in Some laptops cannot get past "Starting Windows":

we also develop our golden images on a vm, sysprep them and then capture with FOG. From there we use fog post install scripts to copy the appropriate drivers to the target computer during imaging. We previously instruct windows OOBE to look for drivers in a specific location when OOBE is running so the drivers get installed at that time. The system works pretty well. We support about 14 different hardware models in our fleet of computers (all Dell BTW).

Thanks for the info! That is what we would like to do as well. Where do you store the drivers folder and do you specify this location in the unattend.xml script? Could you possibly send a step-by-step procedure for doing this, or perhaps some more information on it? You can PM as well. That would be awesome!

Thanks!

george1421

@mark.dangelo said in Some laptops cannot get past "Starting Windows":

Where do you store the drivers folder and do you specify this location in the unattend.xml script?

Sorry for the delay this one slipped through the cracks.

The driver directory can be stored anywhere on the target computer that windows can reach during the OOBE process. I have seen some place the drivers in c:\driver, c:\windows\drivers, c:\windows\drv

Then in your unattend.xml file you need to add this section

    <settings pass="offlineServicing">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsNonWinPE" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <DriverPaths>
                <PathAndCredentials wcm:action="add" wcm:keyValue="1">
                    <Path>C:\Windows\DRV</Path>
                </PathAndCredentials>
            </DriverPaths>
        </component>
    </settings>

ref: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/8889/fog-post-install-script-for-win-driver-injection/4

Some laptops cannot get past "Starting Windows"

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