WinPE no Video

[Factionite]

Hey I'm new to the forum and have searched everywhere for an answer to this problem. For a long time I have been using linux PXE scripts to fix servers which dont have any video cards and its worked perfectly until we started getting pushed to use WinPE. If the sled is plugged into the chassis I can PXE boot just fine with either linux or WinPe. The problem however is when we take it back to the troubleshooting station to run diagnostics on it via WinPE it wont work. It loads the image and then fails, i believe because it doesnt have any video. Installing a video card is out of the question. I got it to load temporarily while useing the /quietboot option on the BCD file. However the results are inconsistant. I need to do more to either suppress the video, or alter the conditions so that it doesnt get hung up on it. Any Ideas?

[jaclaz]

What is a "sled"?

Why do you plug it in a "chassis"?

What do you mean by "fails"?

What do you mean by "load temporarily"?

 

You need to describe more exactly what you are doing and what you are trying to do and the exact error/problem you are having, consider that the more you describe clearly, exactly and accurately your situation the more likely it is that you will get an appropriate solution or workaround.

Standard Litany, please :

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/problem-report-standard-litany.html

 

Seemingly you are in a situation similar to this one:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/59921-using-winpe-without-a-graphics-card/

 

The specific hardware details are needed anyway and as well the exact version of WinPE may be involved.

 

jaclaz

[Tripredacus]

Sounds like a blade server? I've seen those before that have no video and you have to hook another computer up via serial port to see what's going on. That doesn't help anything!

 

What WinPE version are you using? I'd personally try using WinPE 2.0 (Vista) to start.

[Factionite]

First off yes I work at a datacenter with 100's of thousands of servers. If you type "computer sleds in chassis" into google pictures your sort of get an idea of what I work with. However, moving onto my solution I was able to get the the WINPE image to load regardless of a graphics chip being present or not.  I used BCDedit to include the following option

BCDEDIT /set {default} /novesa on /store C:/path/to/BCD

It took a while to find this option and its no available on later PE images however, /noVga seems to do the same thing if /noVesa isn't supported.

[Factionite]

What is a "sled"?

Why do you plug it in a "chassis"?

What do you mean by "fails"?

What do you mean by "load temporarily"?

 

You need to describe more exactly what you are doing and what you are trying to do and the exact error/problem you are having, consider that the more you describe clearly, exactly and accurately your situation the more likely it is that you will get an appropriate solution or workaround.

Standard Litany, please :

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/problem-report-standard-litany.html

 

Seemingly you are in a situation similar to this one:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/59921-using-winpe-without-a-graphics-card/

 

The specific hardware details are needed anyway and as well the exact version of WinPE may be involved.

 

jaclaz

Unfortunately It's against policy for me to provide anything more than I did

[jaclaz]

If you type "computer sleds in chassis" into google pictures your sort of get an idea of what I work with.

Wow, I would have never thought of googling for that.

It's incredible what kind of informations you can find this way.

And google picture! That is a nice idea.  

Curiously when I typed exactly that in google (since I find nowhere "pictures" I clicked on "Images" but I believe the results would be similar), I found quite a lot of images of actual sleds chassis, similar to this one:

So I had some issues in getting an idea about your working environment, from those results.

 

First off yes I work at a datacenter with 100's of thousands of servers.

100's of thousands of PC's need to be at least 200,000 (twohundredthousands).

So, accordingly to this piece of info (which I also found via google, this time typing "largest datacenter amount of servers", without quotes):

https://storageservers.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/facts-and-stats-of-worlds-largest-data-centers/

you are working in the Largest Data Center in the world.

Which should mean any among:

• Google
• Facebook
• Amazon
• Microsoft

(or of course some secret Government thing, like NSA or similar)

Each one using - I believe - very different hardware, some even not using "sleds" at all.

However I was trying to point out how "sled" and "chassis" were more "jargon" than "proper names", as I believe you were referring to Blade Servers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_server

 

However, moving onto my solution I was able to get the the WINPE image to load regardless of a graphics chip being present or not.  I used BCDedit to include the following option

BCDEDIT /set {default} /novesa on /store C:/path/to/BCD

It took a while to find this option and its no available on later PE images however, /noVga seems to do the same thing if /noVesa isn't supported.

Thanks for sharing the solution .

jaclaz

Edited May 21, 2015 by jaclaz

[Factionite]

Ya the datacenter is in Cheyenne, and part of it runs off the waste via biogas. Its a fairly large factility....