Hey Community,
we are running into a really strange problem when installing drivers in OS provisioning.
Before I start please note that the server with the described problem still runs on 9.6 without SP1.
We already fixed most of the problems we have with SP1 but can not put it into production yet.
Back to topic.
Error Description
When installing a Dell client machine with Win7 x64 we get the following errors:
Opening comuter management: Error that Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher is needed, closes afterwards
Opening MMC manually: Same error
Starting a .exe file: Error that this is prohibited by our internet security settings
Starting Internet Explorer: Instantly starts, flashes a blank website and closes in less than a second
Since we cannot access the event view I can not say what exactly causes the problem.
Reinstalling the Internet Explorer does not work either.
Removing from windows features works but reinstallation from this feature does nothing, no error though.
Manual installation impossible, because we can not use .exe files on those machines.
We did not try tweaking the security options via GPO afterwards but somehow I doubt this will work.
Especially since the OS seems not to recognize the IE already installed on the system.
Problem Sources
Instead of a workaround I am more curious about the root of the problem.
When we install a machine with just a network driver everything works like a charm.
Some random combinations result in the error described above.
Dell OptiPlex 7010: Intel Chipset installation
Dell Precision M6800: Touchpad installation
Dell Precision M4700: AMD Videodriver installation, can't recall the exact graphics card
Touchpad? Maybe. Video driver? Ok. But Intel Chipset...?
Older systems like the Dell Optiplex 780 don't show any problems.
Three Ways of Installing Drivers
As mentioned in the beginning we tried three different ways installing the drivers.
In all cases we downloaded the CAB driver files from the official Dell website and extracted them to a network share.
The share is accessible and downloading works fine.
1) HII in LANDesk
HII in Post-OS installation, uses UNC to access the share.
We did not assign the drivers to specific devices and let LANDesk sort them out.
Result: Did not work well, afterbringing in more Drivers often old devices that worked before showed the mentioned error behavior.
Became not manageable pretty fast when you add more different devices.
2) HII in LANDesk v2
HII in Post-OS installation, uses UNC to access the share.
This time we assigned as much drivers as possible to the computer devices in LANDesk.
Result: Came out to be little better than the first try since we still had the said errors even if the amount was slightly reduced.
3) Copydrivers.exe and dsim.exe
This time we tried to split up the drivers pool so eery device just searches its own files.
To do that we used the tool copydrivers.exe in Post-OS installation with parameter /c from Hardware Independent Imaging - rev 9.1
This way we copy the files for the specific model to C:\Drivers_CAB.
Afterwards dsim.exe kicks in with /image:c:\ /add-driver /driver:"c:\Drivers_CAB" /recurse /forceunsigned
Result: Now we could find out that it seems to be related to some single driver-hardware-combinations.
Note that it does not make any difference if we left out /forceunsigned.
Conclusion
After all I can hardly believe that the drivers are causing this issue even if everything looks like.
Manually installing the drivers works without any problems, so it might be something related to the installation process.
Maybe somebody of you have experienced similar and can provide some usefull hints or solutions to this problem?
I also contacted our local support company here but no luck yet.