SSSTK, WinPE2.0 and Broadcom NetXtreme II (DL385G2)

[Matt Carson]

We've used a bootable CD with the DOS SSSTK to do unattended installs for our Windows servers for several years. Hotfixes and GUIRunOnce apps have outgrown our CDs. Not all of our systems have DVDs.

I have a copy of WinPE 2.0 (OPK) and the Win32 and AMD64 versions of SSSTK that I'm using for 32-bit and 64-bit boot CD's to launch unattended installations of Win2K, WS2K3, and WS2K3x64. I have two problems.

HWDiscovery doesn't generate an xml file no matter what path I specify for the output (32 or 64 bit versions). There are no errors. The drivers are loaded OK and the sysmgmt service is running.

The second and more important problem is that I need to be able to set the speed/duplex settings for the NIC (NC373i). The driver I'm using is the "monolithic driver" developed for PE and RIS from Broadcom's site (b06nd51a.sys). Our network group uses Cisco switches set at 100/full. If the speed/duplex settings don't match the systems hang during file copy or take forever to complete.

The Network Configurator (BartPE) has problems with many newer broadcom NICs and won't launch from PE 2.0 (probably out of spite from M$). Adding the "requestedmedia" settings in the registry hasn't worked either.

Has anyone used the SSSTK and WinPE with the newer models (i.e. 385G2, 585G2, etc.) and successfully forced the speed/duplex setting?

[tbone72]

Matt,

The current SSSTK version 1.5 only supports WinPE 1.5(based off Windows 2003 SP1 or x64). I have successfully used this combination on all the latest servers. I haven't forced the NIC speed/duplex, but you might try looking at the INF file for the NIC to see if you can hardcode these settings.

Also, the hardware discovery program in the latest toolkit requires WMI to be installed under WinPE so make sure you use the /WMI option when building your WinPE image.

[Matt Carson]

Thanks for the response.

I guess I'll wait for WinPE 2.0 support for hwdiscovery. I can work around it anyway. I did include the WMI package when building the PE image, and I'm fairly certain the prerequisite drivers and services load OK because it took me a day or two to work through those errors when I didn't have it right.

I did examine b06nd.inf to see if I could modify it to force the settings. There aren't any speed/duplex settings in the file, but I might be able to use the addreg section to include them. Since this is a multifunction chipset, the default HP drivers are different than the PE/RIS monolithic drivers. I plan to replace the drivers on a test system with the monolithic drivers to see what the speed/duplex registry entries look like. When I check the registry on the PE box, the speed/duplex entries that I normally see on production systems with the VBD/multifunction drivers are nonexistent.

Yesterday I opened a support ticket on Broadcom's site. I've read through lots of posts on other site from admins looking for a way to set speed and duplex in WinPE, particularly for newer broadcom chipsets. Hopefully they can provide guidance for modifying the inf, if I can't figure it out myself.