Deployment Solution

I have a Dell OptiPlex 7040 with a Samsung SSD, and you must load the Samsung NVMe driver if you're doing a Windows 7 install by hand. How can you modiffy your unattend.xml to include this driver?

Thanks!

Can you do an SOI (Scripted OS Install) and then have the driver injected during Preboot? I saw your post about getting drivers loaded into the driver DB. You can use that method to upload the NVMe driver into the preboot environment and then, if you;ve got your Operating System source files loaded into the Altiris console you can do the whole process from there.

To load OS source files go to Settings>Deployment>OS Files and click the Add Files button. Navigate to your Windows 7 installation files and highlight the Sources folder to upload.

Then you can boot to your preboot environment and send down a Scripted Install. To do that you go to Jobs/Tasks, right-click on a folder (best to create a new folder) and create a new "Install Windows OS" task. From there you can choose the OS Source (the OS Source folder you uploaded earlier).

If you need more granular details, let me know.

Yeah...I already have a scripted Windows install (along with a working custom unattend.xml), and it works just fine on anything *other* than an OptiPlex 7040 with an SSD.

I've put the Samsumg NVMe driver in both the DriversDB and in Preboot; no dice. I'll run the installer again and grab the error message.

Do you have the same driver listed here in the second post. It helped me.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/surface-pro-4-storage-driver

The Surface 4 uses a similar driver...just a guess at this point!

You also can add Drivers to WindowsDriverStore via DISM or Powershell cmdlet before windows setup is going to specialize phase

Dism /Image:C:\test\offline /Add-Driver /Driver:c:\drivers /Recurse

Add-WindowsDriver -Path "C:\" -Driver "M:\Drivers" -Recurse -ForceUnsigned -verbose

This is what I get during the scripted install: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. Windows needs the driver for device [Standard NVM Express Controller]. Click 'Load Driver' and load the required device driver."

Is this something that

Dism /Image:C:\test\offline /Add-Driver /Driver:c:\drivers /Recurse

would solve?

Thanks!

For storagedrivers you have to add the drivers directly to your WindowsImage (install.wim) or set an DriverPath in your unattend.xml

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744361(v=ws.10).aspx

I have added the appropriate Samsung NVMe driver to the .wim file, re-uploaded this install package, and tried deploying again. I made *some* progress...this time, I get a different error:

Windows installation cannot continue because a required driver could not be installed.

This above error occurs immediately after "Expanding Windows files (100%)" finishes.

I also get an error in the console at the scripted install stage:

ErrorMessage: Exception has occured in File tcube_clientsoi.cpp at Line No 882. Type of exception is ClientSOIException. Error Description is Create Process failed. Value of Windows error code = 6 and message is The handle is invalid.

This scripted install, with the same .wim, works flawlessly on an Oracle VirtualBox VM.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

I just realized that the BIOS was set to RAID mode instead of AHCI. Let's try that again...

I set the BIOS to AHCI...still getting that same error at the same stage.

Just a thought, but does Windows even support NVMe out of the box? Do I have to inject a hotfix into the scripted install?

Update to add native driver support in NVM Express in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2990941

You can also add hotfixes with dism to an image 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2990941 worked like a charm...thanks!

Would this work for Windows 8.0? We have a need in this department for Windows 8.0, specifically...not 8.1, but 8.0. Vendor requirement.