BL 460C G7, NC553i, and WinPE

[John Pross]

The new NC553i nic will not allow you to inject the driver into a windows pe wim file in order to connect to a network to perform an os installation. Can anyone shed some lite on the issues with the NC553I nic?

[Suman_1978]

Hi,

Not seen any issues with NC553i and WinPE.
Do you have any error code or screenshot of the error you get while injecting the driver or while executing.

Thanks

[René Falkenberg]

We have a similar case.

We have injected the nc553i driver into our WinPE boot image and it works as i should.

But when it comes to installing the OS from SCCM where we have told SCCM that it should apply that same driver it fails. So when the OS is installed it has no network connectivity.

We are still investigating the issue. If you have found a working solution please provide it.

/Regards
Rene

[Ali]

Hi John,

How exactly you are creating WINPE image?

what is the windows version?

You need to integrate and NIC driver into Winpe Script.

Hp Advisory c01425505 explains the procedure. NC553i is not included but steps remain the same.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=fr&cc=fr&taskId=110&prodSeriesId=3660114&prodTypeId=329290&objectID=c01425505

So download the latest driver of NC553i from Hp.com and follow the steps given in the article to include it in the winpe script.

hope this helps,
thanks,
Aftab

[John Pross]

The issue was using the older verison of winpe with the new driver. If you are using windows deployment server you must use Windows 2008 R2 which is winpe 3.0. If you are using any version previously to winpe 3.0 the driver will load manually but you can not inject the driver into winpe to boot properly.

[Ali]

Hi John,

thanks for sharing the more info.

I guess you are using Peimg tool or Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool to inject the driver

Is there any specific error message that you get during driver injection?

you mentioned previous version of WINPE is not working. what is the version of WINPE? is it WINPE 2.0
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709665(WS.10).aspx

thanks,
aftab

[John Pross]

Correct it was WinPE 2.0. When injecting the driver it would show no errors and seemed to inject properly. But when using the Boot.wim the driver would not load when booting. You could manually load the driver and gain an IP address for the nic. The issue was it would not save the driver properly with the peimg tools for WimPE 2.0.

[René Falkenberg]

I'm using WinPE 3.0 in Config Manager i have added the driver to the boot image and the boot part is working perf.

Pre-install fase of the Task Sequence works fine. (Booted into WinPE)

During the PostInstall of the Task Sequence, when i Auto Apply Drivers it seems to not detect the driver resulting in the OS not been installed correctly.

I'm using the NC553i driver version 2.102.517.0 from 13 nov. 2010.

Regards
Rene

[Joe-B]

I know this thread stopped over a month ago but I am tearing my hair out at this point. I am trying to PXE boot to WinPE with a BL460 G7 and I was hoping to find the following info......

1.) What "exact" version of Windows should I be using to create the boot.wim (currently Win7 x64).

2.) What "exact" network driver should I be injecting into said .wim file.

I would GREATLY appreciate your help.

[René Falkenberg]

This works:

1) WinPE 3.0 x64 - Our boot image is from Windows 2008 R2 (6.1.7600.16385)

2) cp013481.exe (In sccm task sequence editor, you should tick "Install all compatible drivers", otherwise we could not get it to install the driver)

BR
Rene