How can I identify a missing network driver in WinPE for use in OSD in SCCM

Missing a NIC driver in your WinPE boot image ? no problem, follow this guide to get things working again in SCCM.

Update: if you want to automate most of this see my post here

If you find yourself with some new hardware and are trying to PXE boot and you see WinPE downloading then restarting as soon as it loads, 9 times out of ten it’s due to missing NIC (Network) drivers in your boot.wim image,

This much we all know, but wouldnt it be nice to know exactly which driver we need to add to WinPE ? indeed it would as the process to add them usually takes quite some time.

So how do you test which driver is actually the right one in WinPE, simply PXE boot the offending hardware and immediately bring up your Command prompt before it gets the chance to restart.. examing the SMSTS.log you’ll probably see lines like Executing command line:

“x:\sms\bin\i386\smstftp.exe” -i 192.168.3.2 get \SMSTemp\2011.08.31.13.51.53.0003.{long GUID} Process completed with exit code1…”

Typing Ipconfig will reveal no ip address so you know you’re missing the network drivers, insert a USB key with the drivers you think you need for your new hardware (the tech specs on the Vendors website should reveal what Network card you have).

Tip: If you do not know what network card you have you can find out by using WbemTest , and connecting to root\cimv2 and then use one of the following queries

Select * from Win32_PNPEntity where description LIKE '%ether%'

or

Select * from Win32_PNPEntity where description LIKE '%Network%'

as per the screenshot below

or combine both of the above queries together to search for Ether and Network

select * from Win32_PNPEntity where (description like '%ether%') or (description like '%network%')

click Apply and the result should appear

You can optionally check the Microsoft update catalog website at the following URL, https://catalog.update.microsoft.com for the latest driver matching the vendor ID string found in wbemtest, simply search for that term as shown in the example below

click Add and then download that driver, test it using drvload and provided that it works you can update your boot wim with the driver found above.

Or you can double click on the results listed (only one shown in this example) and scroll down through the window until you see Caption. You should see what network card is installed or you can search for the hardware vendor ID using your favorite search engine.

Once you know what network card it has, download the driver, extract it to your usb key and change to the drive you USB registers as eg: E:

once done, insert the drivers one at a time to verify which one is the driver you actually need using the DRVLOAD command

eg:

cd e:\winpe\winpex86\drivers\network\r291627

then

drvload E1c6232.INF

after some moments, try the following command:-

wpeutil initializeNetwork

followed by

ipconfig

do you get a valid ip ? if so you have found the correct driver to add to your WinPE boot images (and you can do that the normal way in Configmgr).

If you want to re-start the Task Sequence, issue the following command

x:\sms\bin\i386\TsmBootstrap.exe /env:WinPE /configpath:x:\sms\data

Script to search for the driver

<# search for device hardware id in files to find the INF file
# niall brady windows-noob.com 2019/6/25
#>

$DriverPath = "C:\downloads"
$HardwareID = "ven_8086&dev_15EB"
Get-ChildItem -Path $DriverPath -recurse | Select-String -pattern $HardwareID | group path | select name

What if I want to automate the detection of the NIC ?

If you’d like to automate some of the above, check out my blog post here.

that’s it !

cheers

niall

 References:

Checking for Network and Storage before starting a task sequence: https://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/12277-updated-script-how-can-i-check-for-network-connectivity-storage-before-starting-a-task-sequence-in-system-center-2012-r2-configuration-manager/

Technet Drvload Command-Line Options – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766390%28WS.10%29.aspx

Troubleshooting WinPE – https://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/546-how-can-i-troubleshoot-windows-pe-booting-in-sccm/