Ghost Solution Suite

So our current situation is that we have a working image that we can deploy no problem to our computers. Everything from older Win7 machines (HP, lenovo thinkcenter), to Lenovo T460s laptops (still putting Win7 on them).

We ordered some Lenvo T470s machines to test with. The same CPU (i5-6200U, 6300U or i7-6600U), samsung nvme ssd, etc. However, after pushing an image to a 470s windows will not boot fully. It gets to the little splash screen that would normally show the Windows logo - and then it freezes, blue screens, and reboots. (and as a side note, now we can't boot to anything network or usb - just loops back to the BIOS)

I've followed posts/forums/videos for adding drivers to GSS, most of which were already there. Not sure if we're missing something, or why the same image would not work on a T470s that has the same CPU and nvme ssd that our T460s machines have (unless I missed a key spec).

I know that Windows 7 does not come with the necessary drivers by default (i.e. NVMe drivers and USB 3 drivers), but we can push to the Lenovo T460s machiens just fine which have NVMe SSDs, USB3, etc.

Any thoughts? Or suggestions?

Do your T470s have newer Intel 7th Gen "Kaby Lake" chipsets and the T460s 6th Gen "Skylake" chipsets?

If so you are in for a world of pain. These are not supported by Intel or Microsoft. However, I have managed to get a Windows 7 image working on it, I did have to put NVMe drivers into the image before it would boot. I used an older PC to build the image and made sure it had KB2990941 (NVMe) and KB2920188 (TPM 2.0) in it.

What blue screen is it?

The 470s and T460s models have the 6th gen. 6600U, 6300U, or 6200U.

These T470s models also came with Win7Pro on them already. We need enterprise though. (more of a side note, not all that relevant)

I can't tell what the blue screen is actually - it zips by far too quickly to get anything out of it.

So getting a Win7Entr image ready with those two KBs installed, then create a new job/image in GSS *should* work?

I'll give that a try. The strange thing is still that our current image works on the T460s machines that have NVMe SSDs and 6th CPUs, yet not on these T470s machines.

Is ther any other way to push drivers to a new image either during/right after the imaging process. Such as in a job from GSS?

I capture quick blue screens by videoing it with my phone.

These KB articles aren't straighforward drivers as far as I remember.

A common method to push model specific drivers is to have a job that runs in WinPE after the image is put down that uses the variables for either the computer Product Name or Model Name (both 20HEA0J8UK for my T470s).

So the computer product name variable is %#!computer@prod_name% and the model number is %#!computer@model_num%

[Where "computer" is the table name in the SQL eXpress database and "prod_num" and "model_num" are the fields]

You can then copy from .\yourco\drivers\%#!computer@prod_name% to c:\drivers and make sure the c:\drivers is in your unattend.xml as the driver path. But that won't work for boot critical drivers, you need to use DISM to insert them into your OS source files before you start the install, they need to be in the image.

You might find this useful: https://vimeo.com/190760613

Driver Manager will automatically perform all of the steps detailed above for you as part of a GSS job.