NIC Driver Addition in Boot.WIM

Question

Hi Everyone,

Hope everyone is doing good and being safe!

Need someone's experience in dealing with an issue where we had identified that a specific model needed a NIC driver to be included in the boot WIm as it was unable to retain the IP during the WINPE stage and also was unable to download the variable made us to download the entire winpe packages and integrating that in the boot image. Now we have run into confusion before using this boot image across the whole production and need someone's experience in clearing this out:

can a boot image with WINPE driver interrogated for a specific model work absolutely fine with another standard model that doesn't need it ?

What is the best way to identify which NIC is needed to be added for a specific model to avoid other unnecessary NIC inclusion in the boot wim?

Would there be any driver conflict that we should be wrrried for ?

if we include the entire pack for NIC from the vendor website into a boot wim would it cover all the models of that specific vendor?

Hope someone's experience can me figuring this out :).

Regards,
Shashi Dubey

Answer 1

Hi,

Thanks for posting in Microsoft MECM Q&A forum.

Based on my experience, the Windows PE boot images contain many out-of-the-box drivers, if you have to add new or updated drivers to support all your hardware, please refer to:
Add drivers to a Windows 10 deployment with Windows PE using Configuration Manager

Thanks for your time.

Best regards,
Simon

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Answer 2

You should only include the relevant WinPE network, storage drivers in the boot image. Most default WinPE drivers work across multiple hardware vendors but you may need add specific driver from time to time. The only true way to be sure of the driver is to test for it in WinPE.

What did you mean by - ‘ also was unable to download the variable made us to download the entire winpe packages and integrating that in the boot image.’??

Answer 3

HI Rahul,

Thanks for the reply!

I meant the device was unable to download the variable as per the smsts log and also it was unable to retain the IP as it was PXEBOOTING right after booting from the boot image.

I referred to one of the blogs by Niall Brandy and the error shown was just like the way he expressed when it occurred when it needed or has a NIC missing.

Just wanted to make sure is there any specific process we should follow to pick the NIC that is needed by the boot image and to have all of then I injected would mess with the entire functionality of WINPE?

Hope to hear back soon on this.

Regards,
Shashi Dubey