HP 620 Imaging problems

[witch]

Not sure if this is a Win 7, WDS or a hardware problem TBH.

I have built an HP620 and run sysprep on it from inside system 32 etc. All seems to go as you would expect

When I try and capture the image as I have done on other machines before, I do not get any syspreped volumes come up in the list.

The machine was OEM so I reimaged with a volume license just in case this was the problem.I also removed the partition so that there is only one drive in case it was looking at the wrong one.

I follow the same set of instructions I always have: booting from network card, F12 again, capture, then I get the wizard as you would expect. But no volume.

Any ideas anyone? This is driving me mad

[sted]

you probably need an updated storage driver installing on your wds boot media as i believe its one the win7 disk dosent support by default (could be wrong) just be aware i have imaged these and whatever method i chose (and on various networks) they are slow to deploy images to

[SYNACK]

Agreed, you can check by droping out to command prompt and trying to get a dir listing of d: (c is usually the unencrypted boot partition)

[witch]

you probably need an updated storage driver installing on your wds boot media as i believe its one the win7 disk dosent support by default (could be wrong) just be aware i have imaged these and whatever method i chose (and on various networks) they are slow to deploy images to

I'm not sure what you mean - I have already imaged a whole set of windows 7 machines using the same method so wouldnt the drivers etc all be there - or are they specific to the HPs?

If they are, how do I find out and where do I put them??

Edited March 21, 2011 by witch

[qcomer]

If you addon MDT you can inject drivers into the PE environment and into the images during the image process.

[sted]

I'm not sure what you mean - I have already imaged a whole set of windows 7 machines using the same method so wouldnt the drivers etc all be there - or are they specific to the HPs?

If they are, how do I find out and where do I put them??

 

same as any driver for any hardware if your lucky the windows disk has it built in if youre not it dosent. To add drivers to a wds boot image you need to download the waik kit and then use dism to inject the appropriate drivers into the image then re upload the new image to wds

 

if you are using mdt just add the drivers to its repositry and rebuild the deployment share and reupload the new boot images

[witch]

..or I could just use Ghost instead???

[sted]

..or I could just use Ghost instead???

 

well yes but being able to boot from a network without having to find cds set up seeesions etc is much better and its not that hard to inject drivers just a bit of a pita

[witch]

Yes I agree - what i might do is ghost for now (they wanted these machines yesterday) and then try and sort out the driver issue when I have a bit more time (hah!)

Thanks for your help

[sted]

if it helps instructions for adding drivers to win7 below (some of this is more relavant if you want to make a pen drive for a specific pc but what you need is in there)

 

You may need to do this if the sata / network drivers are not built in. Sata important full stop network if you plan to use wds (mdt can add its own drivers you just need to remake the boot images but you will still need to do this if you plan to wds out the image at a later stage)

 

on a pc/server download and install the latest version of windows aik (about 1.6gb iirc so go have a coffee)

 

go to start\all programs\microsoft windows aik\deployment tools command prompt (if you are on a pc/server with uac enabled then run as administrator or it wont work)

 

to make it simpler copy the boot.wim and install.wim from your install media to say d: and make a temp dir on d: called mount

 

first you need to work out which part of the image to mount so type the following

 

dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:d:\boot.wim

or

dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:d:\install.wim

 

if its boot.wim personally I add drivers to both parts 1 and 2 to be on the safe side with install you probably want index 3 pro and can probably safely ignore the rest apart from possibly ultimate (4 I believe)

 

now to mount the image to the mount dir (this allows for adding drivers but you can also manually add any files you want as well

 

dism /Mount-Wim /wimfile:d:\boot.wim /index:1 /MountDir:d:\mount

or

dism /Mount-Wim /wimfile:d:\boot.wim /index:2 /MountDir:d:\mount

or

dism /Mount-Wim /wimfile:d:\install.wim /index:3 /MountDir:d:\mount

 

while waiting now is a good time to extract all your drivers so they are in sensible folders and contain .inf/.cab files (exe/zip files aren’t any use) best bet is to create another temp file on d called drivers then have drivers\audio drivers\video etc you may as well add any drivers you can that way when booted into win7 properly the pc will have them all installed (there are some exceptions apply to this for instance hp quicklaunch keyboard stuff needs running from the exe)

 

DISM /image:d:\mount /Add-Driver /driver:d:\drivers\ /recurse

 

if you have a lot of drivers this again may take a while

 

when that’s finished you need to write this back to the wim file make sure you have the /commit on the end or you will have done nothing

 

dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:d:\mount /commit

 

repeat for any other wim files/indexes needed. Boot.wim is basically winpe so this needs to be done for wds and initial boot from dvd/pen drive. Install.wim is the actual windows 7 you will install

 

then just add the boot.wim back to wds

[witch]

Sorry - too thick to understand any of that I'm afraid. I think I would only get it if I could watch someone do it. Am I on the laptop in question or the server? Which 'install media'? The only install media I have is a Win 7 disc

Do I presume that when you talk about extracting drivers you mean from the laptop?

Don't understand the commands or how to use them.

Going to stop there because I will just make myself look even more stupid than I already do..

Ghost didn't work either - couldn't put a CD rom driver on the laptop so that was a non-starter...unless someone knows how I get round that?

I'm only a part-time tech and some days I wish I wasn't. If I don't get these laptops out by Friday I probably won't be anymore so that'll be one less worry....

Can I use anything else to image it - something EASY

[kennysarmy]

This might help:

Building a Standard Image of Windows 7: Step-by-Step Guide

 

Going to give it a go myself today....

[sted]

in a nutshell then

 

download waik and install it on a pc (dosent really matter where just preferably not the pc you are making the image of or one you are about to wipe)

 

get your win7 install media and copy the file x:\source\boot.wim (with x being cd/pen drive you use to install windows from) to your pc hard drive

 

create a folder on the same hard drive called drivers

 

download the relavant drivers from hp (so in this case network and sata (probably included in chipset)

 

using something like power archiever or winrar extract the exe files the drivers came as to a usefull format and place in c:\drivers\network or c:\drivers\sata

 

open up a wiak command prompt (as administrator iy you pc suffers from uac) and navigate to c:

run the dism command above

when you have an updated boot.wim open up wds and add it as a boot image (with an appropriate name)

[SYNACK]

Are you certain that all recovery partitions and such have been excised, they can mess up WDS.

[witch]

Are you certain that all recovery partitions and such have been excised, they can mess up WDS.

 

Yep - when I upgraded it from OEM to my volume license I deleted all the partitions.