Booting a Samsung Series 9 laptop to WinPE

[DaveJ]

Hello all,

I have a brand new Samsung Series 9 laptop but I'm unable to boot to WinPE to load an image.  I have the correct storage and NIC drivers added to my PXE boot image.  When I boot the machine I see the initial TFTP file transfer (the white bar, with "Windows is loading files"), but after that process is finished I see nothing but a black screen.  WinPE is working great for my other clients, just not this one model.  Has anyone else managed to boot one of these into WinPE?

Thanks,

Dave

[BBC]

Hi Dave,

Not that I would have ever seen such a laptop, but from what you mention, is it possible that you miss a display driver within WinPE and does the machine eventually appear active on the DS console (assuming you run DS 6.9) ?

-BBC

[DaveJ]

BBC,

I don't believe it's a display driver issue as the machine never shows up in Altiris and is not pingable.  I built a bootable WinPE 3.0 USB drive and was able to get it to boot to that, so this appears to be an issue specific to WinPE 2.1.  I also tried booting WinPE 2.1 x64 and got the same black screen.

[Migration User]

Hi DaveJ,

I checked out the specs for these boxes online and it looks like there is no onboard wired NIC to speak of, but a dongle\RJ-45 adapter cable that runs off the wireless NIC. As WinPE 2.1 is built on the Vista codebase, you would have had to add a Vista NIC driver to that boot package. You could take a look at the PCI\Ven string and search for a driver online per the hardware ID number, making sure to look for a Vista driver. WinPE 3.0 likely has a generic NIC driver sufficient to bind to the NIC on that Samsung box.

[DaveJ]

Stephen,

Thanks for the tip.  I've added the Intel wireless driver to my PXE boot config but it's still not working.  I do see two NICs listed - a Realtek PCIe GBe which my PXE boot utilizes, and the Intel Centrino N 6235 wireless.

FWIW, when I booted WinPE 3.0 I had not yet added NIC and storage drivers so although I was able to get it to boot I had no connectivity, although I was able to see the local drive.

[Migration User]

Hi Davej,

The Intel Centrino 6200 Series wirelss NIC drivers have been problematic in general, for both WinPE and Deployanywhere. In the cases I have worked on, the hardware ID in the PCI\Ven string does not match the INF. Are you aware if the machine manufacturer is offering a driver for the wireless NIC and if so, have you tried that one as well?

[DaveJ]

Stephen,

Samsung do offer a driver for the Centrino 6235.  I added that driver to my WinPE 2.1 PXE config but I'm still getting the same result.

Having said that, I took a slightly different approach and added the Realtek NIC drivers to my WinPE 3.0 USB disk.  Once that was done I was able to boot into WinPE 3.0 and obtain an IP.  However, I'm not able to launch the Altiris AClient manually, it complains that TCP/IP may not be installed.  More specifically, the error message states: "Error: the requested name is valid but no data of the requested type was found. TCP/IP may not be installed."

[DaveJ]

Success, sort of.  I cannibalized the startup files and scripts from a working WinPE 2.1 boot config. Now I can get the laptop to boot, run through the normal startup processes, acquire an IP, and launch the agent.  The agent claims that it has connected to my server, however I don't see it online in the console.  In the agent window the Computer Name and MAC address fields are blank, and the status remains at "Client record updated".

[DaveJ]

Success!

So to recap: The new Samsung Series 9 Ultrabooks do not boot into Altiris WinPE 2.1 - after loading the initial files the laptop boots to a black screen.  Further research indicates this is likely a driver issue, and none of the manufacturer-provided drivers resolve the issue.

As a workaround and to avoid disruption of our production environment, I created a bootable WinPE 3.0 USB drive.  I'll document the steps below as a reference for anyone else running into similar issues.

I first created a bootable WinPE 3.0 USB drive as per this link:

http://4sysops.com/archives/build-a-bootable-windows-pe-3-0-usb-drive-with-rescue-tools-part-1/

I then mounted the boot.wim file from a working WinPE 2.1 config:

dism /mount-wim /wimfile:c:\temp\boot.wim /index:1 /mountdir:c:\temp\image

and copied the following from the WIM to a temp directory (assuming the WIM is mounted to c:\temp\image):

1. c:\temp\image\dagent (directory)

2. c:\temp\image\startup (directory)

3. c:\temp\image\windows\system32\startnet.cmd and startutl.bat

4. The contents of the root directory at c:\temp\image

I then unmounted the WIM file:

dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:c:\temp\image /discard

I then copied the boot.wim file created in the previous step to a temp directory and mounted it via DISM:

dism /mount-wim /wimfile:c:\temp\boot.wim /index:1 /mountdir:c:\temp\image

I copied the optional scripting and WMI components to a temp directory (c:\temp\package) from C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_FPs (winpe-hta.cab, winpe-scripting.cab, and winpe-wmi.cab), then ran DISM to integrate the packages into the boot.wim:

dism /image:c:\temp\image /add-package /packagepath:c:\temp\package

Finally, I unmounted boot.wim and copied it to my USB drive under the Sources directory:

dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:c:\temp\image /commit

Once this was done I had a complete bootable WinPE 3.0 environment that loads the Altiris DAgent.  For specific cases such as the Samsung, our techs can boot to USB to image instead of the network.