MDT - Missing Intel Network Card Drivers

[SOLVED] MDT Error Driver Missing on DELL Computers, Intel Networking Card.

A Connection to the deployment share (\\Server\DeploymentShare$) could not be made. The following networking device did not have a driver installed. PCI\VEN_8086 ... ..

Now MDT, as we all [should] know, runs within the WinPE environment which means the drivers we download from places like Dell, Samsung, Intel, RM, HP etc.. will not need to just be for their desired operating system but also compatible with the WinPE environment.

So lets think, you've done everything right, you've extracted the drivers on your network somewhere and through the deployment workbench you've imported them to the nicely laid out file structure I hope you have. You've now also updated the deployment share and (because you had the time) you even regenerated the litetouch boot images and re-imported those into WDS.

You've done everything right, then you get the error you see above.

What this means is that some drivers (most probably your Intel HDD or Networking) are not compatible with WinPE. Unfortunately, Intel say that some chipsets/network card drivers are not yet compatible with these drivers and you are told to wait for them to be updated.

Well if you were clever enough to choose Dell Kit, Dell have already done this for you. Enter the following link:

Dell WinPE Driver Compatibility Pack

Direct Link:

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/DriverFileFormats?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&DriverId=R298040

I'm not going to be completely bias to Dell, but so far they are the only manufacturer to put all the problem drivers in one 33MB download. Not only that they have also given a full compatibility list of which machines are affected by this.

Dell have this system known as KACE and rumour has it they are looking into integrating MDT as their main deployment method, therefore every piece of kit they will sell for the "business to enterprise" level consumer will most likely be checked to see if the components are MDT compliant. This is just an FYI if your main method of deployment is MDT and you are going through procurement.

Give it a go, I have yet to see it fail when I encounter the above error.

If you find that another manufacturer has done the same, please comment below and i'll add the links here. I'm sure there are people out there finding this saying "This is my exact problem, but I have a Samsung" or something like that.

Thanks for reading, Hope this helps,

ITMagician

[EDIT 01-06-2013]

The above links no longer point to a relevant file in Dells site, however by performing a search from the support site you can still obtain the WinPE Driver pack by searching for WinPE, the search currently returns the following WinPE 4.0 Driver pack A01 and has been updated to support WinPE 4.0 and Windows 8 operating systems, the page contains a full list of systems it will work with.