Ghost Solution Suite

Hi all,

GSS 11.5.1.2266

VMware NIC - VMXNET 3

VMware Machine - vmx-09

VMware VCenter Server - 5.5.0.147627

I'm was trying to capture an image of a Windows 2012R2 Virtual Machine via the mounting of an ISO to the VM (as the OS client does not work due to it being unsupported), and started to post this query, but ended up figuring out the answer through a well time Google search. However, as I was part way through I thought I would continue and post the solution, just in case anyone else stumbled across this.

The standard WinPE image drivers that are installed include the VMware.vxnet and vmware-nic drivers, however, on boot the WinPE does not recognise the NIC and so cannot connect.

I did read elsewhere on here that you might be able to create a PCDOS image with 3COM drivers, but I haven't done anything like this in over 20 years so could not remember what to do. In the end, I Googled 'VMXNET 3 drivers' and came across the answer.

On your VM (mine is a Windows 2012R2 server), check out the "Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\" folder. In here you should find the 'VMXNET 3' folder. Copy this to a location where you Ghost Boot Wizard can access. Go through the motions of modifying the WinPE image by pointing to and adding this driver (make sure you select the driver after adding it!), then wait as the Image is de and re-compressed.

Now re-create you Boot ISOs using the modified WinPE image. Mount this ISO to the VM, reboot and away you go.

Cheers

Chris

You can of course dynamically load the device drivers from the path stated using the DRVLOAD command from the WinPE command prompt. Saves the hassle of rebuilding the WIM.

I have been blissfully unaware of that for many a year. You often get by on what you know and never quite explore all the alternative an possibilities. I will have a look at this.Is this covered in the GSS documentation and help?

Regards,

Chris

Try this technote:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/do-i-have-correct-driver-winpe

Thank EdT,

I tried this on some other VMs that have the E1000e NIC installed rather than the VMXNET3 NIC but ran into issues.

The E1000E is recognised as an Intel 82574L NIC in a Windows 2012r2 VM I'm trying to image, but my WinPE Boot disk within GSS contains drivers for the 'Intel 825x GB NIC' and the 'Intel Pro100+1000' cards, yet it didn't recognise the device. So I searched for these drivers for Vista 32bit to be compatible with the WinPE environment in GSS, and came across this Intel download page - https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=&ProductID=3023&ProdId=3023

I extracted the drivers and booted into the WinPE GSS environment, then tried to load the drivers. Win PE reported that DrvLoad had SUCCESSFULLY loaded each and every INF file I pointed to, however, I still saw no NIC info when I ran an 'ipconfig'.

Has anyone got any further info on the E1000e NICs in a VMWare machine and how to add them to GSS?

Cheers

Chris

PS - the Driver Device ID from the 2012r2 VM is "ven_8086&dev_10d3" which is matched in the "e1q6032.inf" file from the above download. I tried once more to Boot into Ghost then use DrvLoad to load this inf, and it still doesn't work.

Stuck now but need to leave it for tonight.

The WinPE boot environment is 32 bit.  Make sure the drivers that you are using are also intended for 32 bit use and are not 64 bit.

If you can't get the NIC to work, WinPE also supports USB devices so you might be able to connect to a USB device to access an image, etc.

Yes, WIn32 driver they are.

Cheers, I'm not sure our VMWare enviroment support USB passthrough though.

I'm going to try a default WinPE 512 set of drivers, then DrvLoad just the dirver mentioned above just to see if something has gone screwy.

As another possible path to consider, one of our users has documented a method of updating WinPE to version 3.1 which uses Win 7 drivers. The article is here:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/creating-and-using-winpe31-image-gss-251

Basically, there is nothing to stop you using any newer version of WinPE as a boot environment. Here are another couple of article references that might be of assistance:

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

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/adventures-winpe-31?om_ext_cid=biz_con_cmgr_cp_20120221_pm

Thanks EdT. It took a little while, but eventually I looked at creating a new WinPE disk, but based on the Windows 8.1 (32 bit) environment (I believe this is PE 5.1), and it worked flawlessly (well, the clone operation works, but as the initial build runs the console in WinPE and as I'm cloning a Windows 2012r2 machine, I don't have the console application added to the actual OS as GSS no longer seems to work for this OS, so the Ghost Console looks to reboot the machine and detect the new OS, which of course fails).

In relation to the original question relating the the VMXNET 3 NIC, you still need to add this to the PE image, however, a VM with E1000e NICs had no problem in discovering and installing the correct drivers.

I think that the underlying issue with the original PE image with GSS was not that the VM used the E1000e NIC, but rather there where two of the same NIC installed on the machine. I have booted a VM from the original PE image with a single E1000e NIC and seen no issues.

For reference I have attached a small set of batch scripts that might act as a starting point to build a WinPE 5.1 image. You still need Windows ADK with Deployment and PE environment installed from Microsoft, but the script should then make a NEW image, once you have copied you GSS file to the sub folder. This is far from perfect as I would like to modify the script to detect an image that has already been extracted and modified that you simply want to add files to, and question user as to what kind of image they want to create (such as a console, or direct Ghost Cast server session), but its a start. I will also post this to the thread you points me toward. Its also taken from a 64 bit based machine so paths names (the the 'Program Files (x86)' folder) might be different if you run it on 32 bit machine.

Attachment(s)

bootcd.zip   650 KB 1 version