Ok, while I managed to click past something similiar in my earlier post, this one appears to be a little bit more challenging.

Apparently, Microsoft's latest WinPE 2.1 does not contain drivers for Vmware and it's disk drivers. I tried to inject the latest drivers into the .WIM file from the vmware tools directory, but I have not had any luck.

When Viewing Diskpart I continuously get the following error:

There are no fixed disks to show

Which basically means it doesn't have the correct driver.

Any thoughts?

Give us the commands you are using to inject the drivers, and we can show you what you need to do.

To add rivers, the first thing I was doing was mounting the image

imagex /mountrw c:\build_x64\winpe.wim 1 c:\build_x64\mount

then I take the scsi driver that i have, and do

peimg /inf=%driverpath%\*.inf cf:\build_x64\mount\windows

then I commit the changes

imagex /unmount c:\build_x64 /commit

THe hardest point I am having is finding the correct driver to take care if this issue.

IS there something i am doing wrong?

when you run that command by hand, what is the output? does it give you an error message?

When PE is loaded, is the driver file actually one the X drive if you do a search?

Jazkal -

"when you run that command by hand, what is the output? does it give you an error message?

When PE is loaded, is the driver file actually one the X drive if you do a search? "

I don't quite understand that statement. What do you mean by hand? I use the peimg and the ouput is successful every time.

I will do a search on the X drive to see if it loaded the driver properly.

The key here is, I think Microsoft is out to get Vmware, so it makes sense they eliminated the driver from WinPE 2.1, but with that said, winPE 2005 works like a charm,

See attachment

The whole idea is, I am not quite sure where those drivers are so I can properly inject them. I am just swinging at anything right now to find the correct driver

Under x64 WinPE v2.1, these are all the VMWare drivers that I am installing, and my PE loads fine, sees all hardware and works:

vmx_svga.inf

vmmemctl.inf

vmmouse.inf

vmxnet.inf

None of these are for the hard drive controller. But then again, I have my VMWare x64 VM running with IDE controller, not SCSI. I'll run a test using the SCSI controller.

EDIT:

After testing my VM with the VMWare SCSI controller as the hard drive, everything works for me, here is a pic:

Edited March 12, 200818 yr by Jazkal

J -

Very interesting.. I have added all those drivers ... Yours is on a Vmware Workstation correct? I am going to try to load my PE Disk on Vmware Workstation and see if I can get it to work on Workstation. In our Vmware ESX Environment, I am seeing those issues.

I am going to start small from the BASE WIM and see what happens...

J - When you create the machine are you using "Windows 2003 Standard" or Windows 2003 Standard x64"

My testing was done on VMWare Workstation v6. But I know that my WinPE images work in our ESX environment without changes.

And my VMWare test VM was using Win2k3 x64 as the base VM

J -

I got good news.. Thanks for making me sane for a little.. I went back to the basics, .. Looks like I got the Cart before the horse on this one.. Before I compiled a base winPE 2.1 iso image, I decided to hack around and inject all types of drivers other drives for example, Dell Drivers and HP Drivers. I am thinking that the Dell Drivers might have screwed something up, so I need to go back to the basics and start with the base WIM and go from there.

The good news is, just using the base wim, I see the drives.. WooHoo...

Sorry about the chasing the tail, but I appreciate you getting me back on track and not thinking, "well, i can inject this and that and this and that and start from scratch"

Just curious, did you inject the x64 drivers for vmware into your x64 Wim image and if you did, did you grab them from the latest Vmware Tools installation? If so, it's a wierd location, under win2k - x64. Did you notice that?

Yes, we update the drivers when ever the vmware tools is updated

Jaz - I think I know what killed this..

When I imported Dell's new Drivers, I now remember that LSI makes Dell DRAC's and therefore create's the driver files. Once I imported Dell's Driver's there must've been some conflict that caused no disks to load

Jaz -

Quick question on this topic...

Where can I find the correct Vmware x64 drivers to inject into the WIM?

I'm pretty sure I found mine in the windows.iso file.

Jaz -

I am confused because you said you update the drivers everytime a new Vmware tools comes out. I was looking for how you updated the NIC drivers for x64 WinPE. I know why the driver is really slow in WinPE, it shows 1gig, but it's lying. I imported all the drivers into the WIM, but my file copies in x64 WinPE on Vmware are still very slow. It's a driver issue, and not having loaded the correct x64 Vmware NIC driver into the WIM.

ANy thoughts?