Reich Consulting
6Feb/081

How To Inject Text-Mode Drivers into a Lite-Touch Windows XP Installation

I'm sure someone else has run into this problem: while using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (formerly known as Business Deployment Desktop) to deploy Windows XP, everything seems to be working just fine until Windows PE finishes it's portion of the setup wherein it copies the Windows XP setup files to your hard drive; then when the XP text-mode setup begins, it fails to recognize the drive. This most commonly occurs on systems with SATA drives or a RAID configuration. The solution is to load the text-mode drivers for the device as you would during an individual install of the operating system. You might be thrown off by the fact that the text-mode setup started by the Deployment Toolkit never prompts for additional drivers. How do you get around this? Integrate the drivers directly into your operating system source using a tool called nLite.