Deployment Solution

Hi all

I'm having an issue deploying an image to a Lenovo S30 workstation. These workstations have a SATA/SAS disk in them.

The only drivers on the Lenovo site for this workstation are the Intel SATA controller drivers for Windows 7 x86. There are no Vista drivers listed for this model of workstation.

The issue I'm having is that after booting to LAN, and booting into PXE, the Ghosting task fails because there is no C: drive visible. Typing C: into a command prompt within PXE says Invalid Drive.

I've installed the Windows 7 x86 drivers into the Preboot tab of the Driver Management section of the console, then Recreated the Preboot environment, followed by pressing the update button in the agent on the server (which invokes bootwiz.exe). But still I cannot build these workstations.

Does anybody have any ideas how I can get PXE to see the hard drive in these machines? Do I need to find a specific Vista driver somewhere? Or have I done something wrong?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Forgot to mention, we're using Deployment Solution 7.1. The PXE environment is WinPE2 x86.

Try the Intel website for Vista drivers.

Make sure the driver you are using contains the correct hardware ID references for the actual hardware. You can use devcon.exe in WinPE if you've wiped windows on it.

Thanks for replying Andy.

Whereabouts would I find devcon.exe? It's not anywhere in the path, and I've done a dir/a/s devcon.exe on the x: drive and can't find it?

Ah, sorry, I thought it was part of WinPE. You can download it from here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272

And add it to WinPE like this:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/adding-files-winpe-image-ds-71

Thanks Andy

I figured out where to get this from yesterday, and got the IDs of the devices in question, however I'm having trouble finding an RSTe driver for Vista x86 on intel.com too. 

The devices IDs are as follows... I cannot find these ID's in the basic RST, I think I need the RSTe (enterprise) version, but as I mentioned I cannot find a specific Vista x86 driver for these IDs.

I installed the driver I listed above, recreated the pxe environment, but it's still not picking up the hard drive in the workstation.

Even if I switch the SATA controller to IDE mode, it still doesn't see the C: drive :-(

That's odd, you sure you haven't got a hardware problem?

If it isn't the actual hard drive, then try loading the entire ChipSet drivers. That's what I sometimes have to do for our Dells.

No hardware problem. The OEM image on the machine loads fine, HDD self test in the bios shows no errors.

I'm thinking that because it cant see the drive in IDE mode either, that there must be a new IDE Chipset on this board too. In fact looking at the hardware IDs, it seems it uses a later revision of each from the previous model (REV_05 replacing REV_04) for example.

Is there a .sys file you need to add too?

Have looked through the entire chipset "driver" extracted, and there are no .sys files. Just a couple of folders full of INF and CAT files.

I'm almost at witts end with this :(

Don't know which Lenovo S30 you have, but you might try using the XP drivers. The Lenovo website shows XP and Windows 7 drivers for at least one S30.

Some XP drivers would work with Vista, so they may install in WinPE.

One other thing, is the BIOS set to UEFI mode? If so, that could also be the problem.

Well I've been wholly unsuccessful in getting Altiris' WinPE to see the drive when it's connected to the blue SAS ports. However if I move the SATA cable to one of the regular SATA ports it works just fine.

I guess that proves it's the SAS controller driver I'm missing, but I thought I'd already added that :(