Rebuilding Laptops No Network

[jgmitchell]

We will soon have a ton of laptops returned to us from being loaned out. They will need rebuilding and we would like to use our SCCM and one of our Task Sequences.

The issue being the laptops don't have network ports. I don't believe a ethernet adapter will work.

 

I have tried using the bootable media options in SCCM but this fails when it tries to run with partitioning error.

 

Is this doable, and if so how?

 

Cheers for any help.

[Steve21]

We build a lot using a USB Ethernet, the main two bits is ensuring the drivers are in boot images etc if required (generally for the cheaper brand adapters) and adding the MAC address of the adapter to the ignored list on SCCM for client recognition (this ensures it doesn’t use the same id across multiple computers)

 

Steve

[Jawloms]

I don't believe a ethernet adapter will work.

 

What makes you think they won't work? We have 130 Lenovo laptops and we built them all using USB3 -> Ethernet adapters.

[clareq]

I don't think the partitioning error is network related. I've build machines solely from a USB - you need to create stand alone media, build without adding to the domain, and add it manually later.

[jgmitchell]

When i previously looked into network adapters there was only one lenovo one that would work with certain Lenovos and BIOS. This may have changed since though.

[Jawloms]

My USB -> Ethernet adapters are Lenovo, so you could be right. I got mine from Stone.

[Davit2005]

I've found the StarTech USB31000S to be quite good for network booting devices with no network cards but a double check on the www might be worth it before commiting. You are most likely going to be concerned with the chipset then as others have said you may need to add this into SCCM as a driver. Been a long time since I did that though.

[jgmitchell]

So I've just tried another and removed the domain join, but it is failing after trying to format C: Generic error 0x80004001

[clareq]

Are you using UEFI? Anything in the smts log?

[MunkySpanner]

Had endless fun with getting this working. Have a mix of devices and so far found the following:

 

StarTech USB31000S Ethernet Adapter - Works with GEOBook 109 so just booted using WDS and deployed. Didn't work with Lenovo 100e or Dell 3190. Also have some HP 250s out but haven't had any back for re-imaging yet.

 

For the Dell and Lenovo, we created an offline media task sequence in MDT .Then created bootable disks from the ISO using some old 30GB 2.5" SSDs with a SATA to USB Adapter. Booting from USB works fine on both Dell and Lenovo. Added the appropriate drivers in the task sequence as well as the drivers for the StarTech adapter so that once imaged they automatically join the domain. For some reason the Partitioning part of the task sequence had to point to Disk 1 on the Dell and Disk 0 on the Lenovo. Easily changed by editing the ts.xml as required.