[WDS] Dell Latitude E6410 driver issue

[RobCT]

I know this is an old thread, but this is exactly what I'm trying to do and can't get it to work. We use WDS to deploy XP/Vista/7 images. We just started getting Dell Latitude 6410's and evidently Dell changed the NIC in them. I almost get to the initial screen to choose the image and I get an error stating the NIC drivers were not found. I tried everything I could think of. Putting XP/Vista/7 drivers into the deploy (boot.wim) file. I even created a new Deploy boot image from the boot.wim that was on the Windows 7 DVD that came with the laptop. No luck. Downloaded drivers from Dell's site. No luck. I don't know if maybe I'm injecting the drivers wrong, using the wrong drivers, or something I haven't even thought of yet. Since all our laotop are going to be 6410's now I need to get this done. ANy help would be greatly appereciated.

Oh, and I tried using the peimg.exe command line in PE Tools but I get the error that the image is not a pe image, or whatever it says. I doni't have the exact message because I got fed up and shut the machine down.

Thanks in advance!

[ZeroHour]

I know this is an old thread, but this is exactly what I'm trying to do and can't get it to work. We use WDS to deploy XP/Vista/7 images. We just started getting Dell Latitude 6410's and evidently Dell changed the NIC in them. I almost get to the initial screen to choose the image and I get an error stating the NIC drivers were not found. I tried everything I could think of. Putting XP/Vista/7 drivers into the deploy (boot.wim) file. I even created a new Deploy boot image from the boot.wim that was on the Windows 7 DVD that came with the laptop. No luck. Downloaded drivers from Dell's site. No luck. I don't know if maybe I'm injecting the drivers wrong, using the wrong drivers, or something I haven't even thought of yet. Since all our laotop are going to be 6410's now I need to get this done. ANy help would be greatly appereciated.

Oh, and I tried using the peimg.exe command line in PE Tools but I get the error that the image is not a pe image, or whatever it says. I doni't have the exact message because I got fed up and shut the machine down.

Thanks in advance!

Which version of server is your WDS running?
Do not insert XP drivers into the boot.wim as they wont work and will conflict. If your using 2008 use vista nic drivers, 2008 r2 then you use w7 drivers.

[teejay]

Go onto the Dell Support site, look up the model and under System Management in the driver list there is a WinPE driver pack which has the correct drivers for WinPE for all Dell machines. These are not the same as the drivers you download for the full operating system.

[tarquel]

What I did was to get the latest Intel drivers from the Intel site, and inject the driver matching Intel(R) 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection into the relevent boot images.

WinPE was then able to continue and start of my [SCCM] MDT task sequence to deploy the OS

Hope that helps.
Nath

[PiqueABoo]

Do not insert XP drivers into the boot.wim as they wont work.

Obviously not the first thing to do if you have Win7 drivers, but sometimes they can. I necessarily tried putting an XP NIC driver in a WinPE3 image a while back and it worked.

[SYNACK]

Intel(R) 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection

I see the problem as I have had this before with a filthy Toshiba. These network cards are implemented at least with two seporate hardware IDs depending on the vendors implementation. HP have the good sense to use the standard hardware ID and so the drivers work fine but places like Toshiba use the secondary hardware ID.

The problem with this is that the second hardware ID is not supported/has problems with certain versions of the driver and I have to go through three revisions of the driver to find one that worked. This is computnded by the fact that you need to remove the non-working versions of the driver from the boot.wim before it will pick up the working ones.

I eventually got my the problem Toshiba going with the 14.6 drivers if I recall correctly. I did a (text inside) search on the driver folders with the reported hardware id to find out which inf files held the ID (e1k*.inf I think) then deleted all of those from the out of box drivers bit before adding the 14.6 drivers.

To add to this the 14.6 drivers for Windows 7 are actually unstable and will only pick up the network after a clean shutdown and startup failing without being able to get an IP after a reboot. After the primary image was deployed I was able to install the latest 15.x version of the drivers right from the intel site which seem to work well.

In my experience Intel really don't seem to be able to cope with Windows Vista/7's driver model very well as much of their hardware simply bombs for the first few versions of drivers. Have had the same issues (network card deafness) with one of their other lates model cards also until the drivers were updated. The latest Pro 1000/MT driver from Windows update for Windows 7x64 also seems to kill the cards directly requireing a rollback to keep a working connection for more than 15 seconds.

I think intel need to hire some new prefferably competent staff for their driver development as it is getting ridiculous jumping through the many hoops required to get their gear working on a current OS due to their shoddy drivers.

[RobCT]

Go onto the Dell Support site, look up the model and under System Management in the driver list there is a WinPE driver pack which has the correct drivers for WinPE for all Dell machines. These are not the same as the drivers you download for the full operating system.

This was it! I had learned through trial and error (and a lot of research) that I needed to be using MDT 2010 and the newest version of WAIK. That and this suggestion solved my issues. Why the hell Dell would put drivers anywhere except under the drivers sections? Who knows. I guess since they are PE drivers they should be considered System Management.

Thanks everyone!