Ghost Solution Suite

I have been using Ghost Console on the solution suite 2.5 running at 11.5.1.2269 for years now.  I have started to use ghost to push out Windows 7 x64 to all our remote PC's with no issues using the built in WinPe 2.0.  I have setup custom Boot Drivers for all of our Dell PC's with the Vista 32bit drivers and have not had a problem until now.  Now when I run any task that involes booting into WinPE I get the following error:

Failed to virtual Partition;

Drivers could not be found in the PreOS for the following devices:

Manufacturer: "@net1yx64.inf,%intel%;Intel",Description:'@net1yx64.inf,%e10bfnc.devicedesc%:Intel(R) 82567LF Gigabit Network Connection",PCI Vendor: 0x8086, PCI Device: 0x10bf, PCI Subsystem:0x20ee17aa

I am not using any 64bit drivers in my WinPe-512 build. This issue just appeared recently. We are pushing to Dell Optiplex 380, 390, 3010, and Latitude 5430's.  We have stopped using WinPE and started to use PCDOS for now.  Interesting enough, none of the PC's are using the Intel 82567LF NIC and the Server is an HP Proliant DL380 G5 with NC373i Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter with Server 2008R2.

Just wandering if anybody else has run into this.

Have you checked to make sure that there isn't a 64 bit version of WinPE being called from your Ghost server?  Unless you personally have sole control over the Ghost environment, someone may have put a WIM image in there that is 64 bit.

The other factor is that the NIC is 64 bit only and therefore would need a 64 bit version of WinPE to support it.

Check the INF file for your NIC drivers to see if they are 64 bit only.

this error is happening on all machines now, not just specific ones?

That is correct. The above list is every PC in our enviroment and it happens to all of them.  We have switched back to PCDos for now so we are able to image and will be moving over to SCCM 2012R2 in a couple of months but I was intrigued to see if anybody else has run into this.

I even took our Test server, uninstalled ghost completely, reinstalled ghost with a fresh set of Boot Files and added the Vista 32bit drivers like I have before and got the same issue.  I don't have any 64bit drivers, I verified that on the drivers I was using and it's weird that it would fail on a 64bit Intel NIC when most of the PC's are running Realtek NIC's.  I am begging to think it is some kind of Windows update or something since I know Ghost has not been updated in years.

Try running the utility described here on your hardware:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/readyutility-assist-identifying-plug-and-play-drivers

It needs to run from Windows or WinPE, and will create a text file containing all the PNP IDs in your system and what they are associated with. That way you can check whether there is indeed such a NIC in the system. It could be that an onboard LAN function in one of the chipsets has become enabled in the bios, as it's not uncommon to find more than one LAN port on machines these days.

On the other hand, it may be that an INF file has become corrupted in your WinPE image and a device with the same PNP ID is being confused with the Intel device.  It may be interesting to locate and remove the offending Intel NIC inf file as referenced in the error message and see what happens when you try and boot up from the modified WinPE image.

if there is a driver in your boot image that has that DEV_ID incorrectly listed (or added, or edited, etc), it can mess up your "to virtual partition" because it will complain about missing files.

did you recently add/change/check/unchech drivers or drivers boxes in your boot image?