Ghost Woes with Dell Latitude ST Tablet

[AngryTechnician]

Installed win8 release preview but cant seem to get any wireless driver working? Which did you use @AngryTechnician?

 

ALso, i tried to install that BIOS A04 within win8 but it didnt work. Does it need to run from w7?

 

I used the driver from the Dell site. It's horrible because it doesn't have an .inf installer that works, so you are stuck with the rubbish Atheros client utilities, but it does provide connectivity.

 

I was able to flash to A04 from within Windows 8. I don't recall issuing command line params, but I may have launched the utility from an elevated prompt.

 

@AngryTechnician - What kinds of hassels have you had with them?

 

P***-poor performance, basically. The Atom processor does it no favours whatsoever and even the SSD doesn't seem to help - suspect they used a cheap one with poor read/write speeds. As a standalone device it is fine, but as a domain-joined workstation it struggles.

[RabbieBurns]

Ive managed to go to A04, got all the devices working.

 

Then I tried to clone the disk using ShadowProtect to another slate. It seemed to work, however wireless and audio had a Red X next to them.

 

Investigating, it seems that 99% of the services are stopped, and I cannot start them, eg the AudoSrvc try to start it manually and get

The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

 

Very strange and I cant figure it ouyt.

[RabbieBurns]

Ive managed to go to A04, got all the devices working.

 

Then I tried to clone the disk using ShadowProtect to another slate. It seemed to work, however wireless and audio had a Red X next to them.

 

Investigating, it seems that 99% of the services are stopped, and I cannot start them, eg the AudoSrvc try to start it manually and get

 

Very strange and I cant figure it ouyt.

 

msconfig -> normal startup will fix it.

[SYNACK]

P***-poor performance, basically. The Atom processor does it no favours whatsoever and even the SSD doesn't seem to help - suspect they used a cheap one with poor read/write speeds. As a standalone device it is fine, but as a domain-joined workstation it struggles.

 

How did you find it with W8, the Acer I installed it on gave it a huge boost from 7Pro and W8 includes AV so it could actually make them much better. It changed the Acer from a maybe to a definatly.

[RabbieBurns]

These seem good with win8 Ive just rolled out all 60 with win8 for the new term. Figured it was better to have something at least a bit useable.

 

The OSK is 100x better, but opening the start menu from the desktop is tricky even with the stylus, and most apps are still desktop aps that drop to the desktop to run.

[SYNACK]

We defaulted it to 125% dpi which makes it better under desktop mode. It has some issues with the auto-rotation where it drops back to desktop mode from whatever you're in if you turn it then turn it back. The metro version of ie10 also still has a few glitches, EG for instance won't allow enter to insert a line break, probably thanks to the horrible vbulitin js behind the scenes but it still manages to limp through under desktop browsers. I wanted to get a beta of Office 2012 to put on to as that has metro ui as well however couldn't find a released one. Some of the flash and shockwave based desktop projector stuff is a bit squiffy needing two clicks/touches to register as a click but I think that's more to do with adobe.

[RabbieBurns]

@AngryTechnician This is the error I am getting trying to PXE boot with SCCM 2012.

 

 

Any suggestions whats not working? Its running A04 firmware

[SYNACK]

@AngryTechnician This is the error I am getting trying to PXE boot with SCCM 2012.

 

 

 

Any suggestions whats not working? Its running A04 firmware

 

Not a solution but can you make an auto WinPE usb boot device like with MDT that you could boot from that would then chain it to the NIC.

 

It looks like the bootloader was trying to chain load to the PXE image via the boot device but its implementation of PXE is a bit screwy and it can't find the file.

 

Can you try booting it to a different PXE solution like thinstation on a seporate network to check if the issue effects other implementations to and if it chokes at a different place with another different error message.

[RabbieBurns]

Ill have a go at setting up a separate network with a different pxe solution.

 

Although your suggestion of USB booting would be a workable solution. Is this something SCCM can do?

 

edit: our SCCM is virtual so not sure how that would work with USB...

Edited August 15, 2012 by RabbieBurns

[SYNACK]

Ill have a go at setting up a separate network with a different pxe solution.

 

Although your suggestion of USB booting would be a workable solution. Is this something SCCM can do?

 

edit: our SCCM is virtual so not sure how that would work with USB...

 

Under MDT it makes a WIM and an ISO for booting, there are various tools for dumping it on a USB key which you can map to over an RDP session.

 

There is an option under deployment workbench to do it too, I think that SCCM builds in MDT so the option should still be there somewhere.

[SYNACK]

System Center Configuration Manager 2012 | Create Bootable USB Media SCCM 2012 For deploy Windows 7 or XP - Michaël BERTUIT Passion for Microsoft System Center 2012 Products SCCM - Config Mgr 2012 / SCOM - OpsMgr 2012,MDT 2012, Windows 2012 Server, W

 

Steps to make USB Drive Bootable for SCCM - Paul Jones Notes from the Field - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

[AngryTechnician]

I use WDS rather than SCCM (which I detest) so not my area of expertise. I will say though that BIOS version A05 is now available.

 

Not that it stops the ST being pants. Yesterday mine wouldn't even power on after going into hibernate, and was so badly stuffed I had to dismantle it and detach the internal battery to reset it. I would never buy another one of these, and I will be thinking twice about buying any future tablets from Dell.

[RabbieBurns]

System Center Configuration Manager 2012 | Create Bootable USB Media SCCM 2012 For deploy Windows 7 or XP - Michaël BERTUIT Passion for Microsoft System Center 2012 Products SCCM - Config Mgr 2012 / SCOM - OpsMgr 2012,MDT 2012, Windows 2012 Server, W

 

Steps to make USB Drive Bootable for SCCM - Paul Jones Notes from the Field - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

Thanks, this has worked a treat.

[RabbieBurns]

Finally got round to building an image with the enterprise RTM version of windows 8 32 bit and Im really struggling to get wireless stable. It connects but then it drops out after a couple of minutes, going to 'limited connectivity'.

 

Using the latest A05 Bios, and the latest driver from the website, but its still not solid.

 

What drivers have you got working for the wifi?

[AngryTechnician]

Pretty sure I just used the ones from the Dell Support site. Haven't tried with Windows 8 RTM though.

[SYNACK]

Have you tried using the 64bit version on them, little more memory hungry but generally more stable driver wise.

[RabbieBurns]

afaik the atom processor im them doesnt support x64

[SYNACK]

afaik the atom processor im them doesnt support x64

 

That's unfortunate:

http://ark.intel.com/products/55663

we have some Atom gear running x64 but they have a different revision of CPU in them.

Edited October 29, 2012 by SYNACK

[RabbieBurns]

its an Atheros AR6003 if that makes it any easier for someone to find a compatiable windows 8 driver

[SYNACK]

Windows 8 Consumer Preview - HP Slate 2 NIC (Atheros) driver fail - code 10

 

Maybe do a search for the pnpid and/or do an 'update' from the context menu in device manager to search the windows update db.

[RabbieBurns]

ive tried everything i know... i should probably add that on the release preview of windows 8 the exact same driver was a lot more stable.

[cjensen84]

ive tried everything i know... i should probably add that on the release preview of windows 8 the exact same driver was a lot more stable.

 

If anyone is interested I have the full driver pack for the Latitude ST Tablet for windows 8. Everything works but the multitouch only has 4 touch points not 5. other than that everything works correctly.

 

The driver pack is like 500MB compressed so if anyone wants it you need to provide me we an FTP to put it on or something. And if you are really generous you would make sure everyone else could download it from there too..

[cjensen84]

We have taken delivery of 100 Dell Latitude ST Tablets. We have ordered some of the docking stations to make use of the Ethernet port so we can image them but Im having a real problem trying to Ghost them, or even use any WinPE to boot.

 

The docking stations use the SMSC LAN7500 USB-LAN Chip, The driver on the dell site works fine for installing directly into windows, but I cannot seem to find a driver I can use with WinPE either via PXE or Ghost USB stick that will work. OR PC-dos, etc.

 

This is the data sheet for the usb-lan chip but Im struggling to find any drivers...

 

SMSC - ErrorDocument 404 / File Not Found

 

Any help at all would be much appreciated!

 

Cheers

 

Hey I don't know if you are still trying to work on this but I not only have built a ghost boot disk that works with these tablets (I had to image 180 of them) but I also have every driver to make this tablet fully functional under windows 8. email me if you need the info dthardcore.gmail.com

[HowardG]

Hi,

 

We have a very similar problem where on a Dell XPS 13 and XPS 12 in conjunction with the SMSC LAN7500 adaptor. It works perfectly with the provided drivers in XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8. It PXE boots correctly as well but the drivers just will not work with WinPE 2.1. We use Altiris 6.9 SP4 for deployments and I have heard that Symantec have not even changed the support WinPE version in 7.1, perhaps even 7.5. I have spent ours messing around with "devcon", proving that the laptop can see the hardware just fine, it just won't accept the drivers.

 

If anyone has got this to work I would be most grateful.

 

Howard