Broadcomm drivers do not load at startup - my solution.

[bmusgrove]

As I just experienced this problem , and I searched for along time to find a solution, I thought it may be useful to post it. I gleaned this from several Broadcomm posts on this forum. Hopefully it will help another user and they will not have to search as long.

I re-installed RIS while trying to trouble shoot TFTP problems in the PXE boot. While rebuilding a a new unattended WinXP slipstreamed image, I could not get the Broadcomm drivers to work. They worked fine during the Text mode part of the setup, but failed to load at startup. I had to reinstall the Broadcom drivers after the first time starting windows on each machine. I used the drivers from the Broadcomm ZIP file I had downloaded (version 9.81.0.0.D, copied to a flash drive) and it worked fine, so I was sure it was not a driver

After much research. I discovered the instructions for modifying the Broadcomm driver files had changed, and had not read them close enough. I basically did it from memory, using the old method that had worked before I had re-installed RIS and rebuilt the images. After carefully reading the instructions, I realized I should have copied a modified INF file to i386 and a unmodifierd inf file to the NIC driver directory, instead of a modified file to both.

Note : The instructions by Microsoft in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 315279 "How to Add Third-Party OEM Network Adapters to RIS Installations." are not entirely correct for Broadcomm drivers. You must follow the instructions provided by Broadcom, exactly as they are written. Don't be a dummy like I was and just skim through them , assuming you already know them . These can be found at http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_n..._drivers.php#79 .

Here is a synopsis

1) Make a backup copy of the INF file so you have a unmodified version of it.

2) Modify one version per Broadcomm instructions ( http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_n..._drivers.php#79 ) . Basically this is changing %BRCM% = Broadcom, NTx86.5.1, NTamd64 to read %BRCM% = Broadcom.NTx86.5.1, NTamd64 in the [Manafacturer] section

3) Copy the modified INF file to to the I386 directory

4) Copy the unmodfied, original INF file to the $OEM$\$1\drivers\NIC directory.

5) Stop and Restart the BINL service

In the past (using 7x and early 8x version drivers)I had always copied the modified INF file to both directories and it had worked.

I also noticed that stopping and restarting the BINL service did not create the PNF files as I expected. Instead this was done the first time the image was used in a RIS install. Is this a new change for Windows 2003 RIS?