Jump to content

Imaging Windows


Joe Caparco

Recommended Posts

So I am trying to image some brand new windows computers.  From what I understand, I have to have the MAC address BEFORE I can push out an image to these machines. 

So we got some brand new Dells and no where on the box does it have the MAC address. So do I really have to turn on every PC that I want to image to find the MAC address in the BIOS ?  Is there a way that I can just blast the image out to 25 machines without the MAC address?   I use to to this with Windows Deployment 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderators

Hi @Joe Caparcothe MAC address is used because when the device boots up and talks to the IVS server the MAC address is seen when doing PXE booting so it became the thing needed to make the association between an image and computer record. Usually with Dell I believe the MAC is printed on a sticker on the outside of the cardboard box it shipped in. Otherwise Dell should have a shipping manifest that can include the MAC address. I know from the previous company I worked at that Dell can make the MAC addresses available in a shipping list because we had a process where we had that uploaded to us with every shipment. On newer Dells there is a hidden MAC address used when using a USB dongle and it's that MAC address you really need if you image with a USB dongle. So the PXE boot is the reason MAC address was the thing needed to make the association, but hopefully another customer who buys Dells can chime in with their process and can confirm if they get the MAC address from a shipping manifest or other location/process. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Josh Levitsky
This post was recognized by Josh Levitsky!

RMathews was awarded the badge 'Helpful' and 5 points.

You can also plug the computers into the network,  turn the computers on and capture the Mac address from DHCP server prior to going through OOBE.  If they are WIFI then you will need to complete OOBE up to the WIFI connection point.  Then grab the addresses from DHCP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Josh Levitsky
This post was recognized by Josh Levitsky!

Matt S was awarded the badge 'Helpful' and 5 points.

We just received a shipment of new XPS and Vostros from Dell.

No MAC address printed anywhere either. Only option was to boot into BIOS.

Annoyingly, the vostro's do not support MAC address pass through. So they cause a whole extra level of complexity to image. The XPS's have their passed through MAC on the first page of the BIOS.

While it may be annoying to have to boot each into BIOS to get this, we also found that was necessary anyway, as they shipped from Dell in a state that could not be PXE booted, so a tech had to go an change bios settings anyway.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We also found the same thing with the brand new OptiPlex 3090's. Also, we had to disable secure boot in the BIOS. 

 

For some reason we also had to disable SATA drives, because they only come with NVME - When I sued IVS to capture the image, I kept getting a "no drive found"  message - until I went into the BIOS to disable SATA ... So far I have been able to capture an image, but can not get that image to deploy to any of the new Dells. ( I ended up going back to Windows Deployment  until I can figure this one out ) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Joe Caparco said:

kept getting a "no drive found"  message

We had this same message with both the Vostro's and the XPSs. Dell shipped the with RAID enabled; looks like they bundle some kind of RAID drivers in their OEM media. Once that was disabled, we were able to both capture and restore without issue.

Here is our BIOS config for the vostros in case it helps:

# Vostro 5320
## BIOS Config:

### Boot Configuration
* Windows Boot Manger: Top of list
(USB NIC (IPV4): Top of list - to use BIOS network boot)
* Enable secure boot: OFF

### Storage
* SATA/NVMe Operation: AHCI/NVMe

### Integrated Devices
* USB/Thunderbolt Configiration
	* Enable USB Ports: True
	* Enable USB Boot Support: True
* Enable Thunderbolt Boot Support: ON
* Enable Thunderbolt Pre-boot Modules: ON

### Connection
* Wireless Device Enable
	* WLAN: Ticked
	* Bluetooth: Ticked
* Enable UEFI Network Stack: ENABLED
* HTTP(s) Boot Mode: OFF

### System Management
* Wake On WLAN: LAN with PXE Boot

### Pre-boot Behavior
* Fastboot: Thorough

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...