Ry:
cannot install windows 2003, vista, or 2008 off network due to missing driver for dell 2950 network card. card is a broadcom BCM5708C gigabit ethernet card
Support Guy:
I now have your request on screen. I’ll need a few moments to review your issue.
Ry:
(big url) appears to be the right drivers
Support Guy:
As I understand that you are facing an issue with Network adapter. am I right?
Ry:
yes. I cannot install from WDS netboot because the network image does not have the driver for my network card. the network card is the broadcom bcm5708C and the machine is a dell 2950 server.
Support Guy:
Okay. Right Click on Network card> Properties> Then Driver tab> Then Click on Update Driver and check.
Ry:
this happens before the operating system is loaded, when using WDS. I have said that it is a network install twice.
Support Guy:
Okay. May I know if you get any error message?
Ry:
I don’t quite understand what you’re asking. when I try to boot from the network, the WDS image does not have the driver to continue the install. depending on the operating system, there are different error messages. the solution is that the driver for the broadcom BCM5708C network card needs to be added to the WDS images for vista, 2003, and 2008
Support Guy:
I apologise for delay. Did you try to uninstall the Network driver and check?
Ry:
it is not possible to uninstall the network driver as there is no operating system installed. is there someone else more senior I may speak with? I don’t think you understand the problem.
14 April 2008 at 18:44
It’s things like this that keep me from feeling guilty when I look at my paycheck.
14 April 2008 at 18:50
Please install the needful.
15 April 2008 at 12:57
I talked to Paypal support last week and it took about 10 minutes before the support person understood the issue. I went around and around with her and she finally got it.
I talk with Microsoft server support from time to time and they’re usually pretty sharp, but it sucks when you’re connected to a person who’s just working from a script.
BTW, watch out for those Broadcom drivers. They’ve caused numerous problems in our organization.
25 April 2008 at 6:29
I’ve heard some talks about problems intalling Broadcom drivers. The last one was the CPU load problem with the b57nd60x driver revealed by Mark Russinovich http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/04/07/3031251.aspx. That’s what Mark writes on his blog ‘The updated driver has not yet been posted to Dell’s support site, but I expect it to show up there in the near future’. It could be that the updated version can already be downloaded from DELL’s site. The other well known case https://msmvps.com/blogs/thenakedmvp/archive/2007/01/06/how-broadcom-and-dell-wasted-three-days-of-my-time.aspx is when you need to disable the TOE functionality in BIOS on the motherboard. Check it out, it may help you here. If you had the system rolled out you could just use the network shell tool configure the network interface and disable the TOE feature without needing to do any manual changes in the BIOS.
Sometimes, it is recommended that you install the dirver for Vista on XP machine and *re-image* it again.
In your particular case the best way would be to mount the WIM image with imagex tool by running it with the /mountrw switch. Then you just prepare the updated driver that is not failing when run on WinPE 2.0 and add it to the image updating it with the new driver by using the peimg tool. This is one of the advantages of WIM images and WAIK kit compared to sysprep and poor RIS deployments. You can read the detailed step-by-step guide on how you can do that here http://apcmag.com/how_to_inject_drivers_into_microsofts_free_os_windows_pe_20.htm .
As for the problems with helpdesk guy who was unable to understand your problems the right way, I believe this mostly connected with ineffective issue management. I have a friend who manages our helpdesk team and I know quite well what it takes for the guys to handle all the flow of requests that they get from us during the day. Sometimes they have to have dozens of arms to receive this request, fix it and switch to solving other problems.
Maybe it worth to deploy something like Scriptlogic’s BridgeTrak? I don’t know if it would make sense for you. Well, you can check it yourself by trying out them live http://scriptlogic.com/downloadmanager/default.aspx?focus=75 I sent the info the my that friend managing the helpdesk team and they liked it. Currently they are running them on a trial. I don’t have much information about it. What I can tell for sure is that they definitely liked that the tool didn’t take long to deploy, it provided a integration with Active Directory for seamless authentication and a distributed access to the helpdesk database for both the helpdesk guys and users.
Personally I like that we currently have a knowledgebase. I can search trough it to find if I can fix the issue myself and if not I just create a request in my Outlook and send it to a Helpdesk account that I select from Exchange. I don’t know exactly how the thing works there but as far as I know the process is fully automated and the mail gets automatically parsed and processed into the database as it falls into the mailbox configured on the mail server for the Helpdesk account.
If you are interested I could try to ask him for more details about the tool and post it back to you here.
Cheers,
Mark.