So, I don’t know if there are any one out there who still playing around with BDD/MDT and SMS? if not your are the lucky ones… Myself I still have customers who are running that setup… Basically it runs fine, but there is always the issue with updating WinPE with NIC and Storage drivers…

Recently (well yesterday actually) I had to update WinPE to work on a "DELL Precision T5400" with a non built in SAS 6 Storage Controller. Normally its not that difficult to add storage controllers to WinPE 1.5, I just import them in trough SMS, and the copy the CustomWinPE folder to my PE build folder.

But with this driver it didn’t work, so I tried a bunch of things which also didn’t work. I finally stumbled on some articles describing how to modify TEXTSETUP.SIF. I cant exactly say it was easy to under stand, so I though id try and explain how to do it here…

First you get a hold of the Storage .sys files. In my case ,and properly most cases, we are talking about the Intel SATA driver IASTOR.sys and the DELL SAS driver SYMMPI.sys  (this is the one for the T4500), but i’t could be any number of system files…

1. Copy the .sys files to I386\system32\drivers folder of your WinPE build

2. Open Textsetup.sif from I386 folder

3. Search for the [HardwareIdsDatabase] section and paste in the following information

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2653&CC_0106 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2681&CC_0106 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C1&CC_0106 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C5&CC_0106 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2821&CC_0106 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2829&CC_0106 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2922&CC_0106 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_5029&CC_0106 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2682&CC_0104 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C3&CC_0104 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C6&CC_0104 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2822&CC_0104 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_282A&CC_0104 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_1000&DEV_0054&SUBSYS_1F041028 = "symmpi"
PCI\VEN_1000&DEV_0054&SUBSYS_1F061028 = "symmpi"
PCI\VEN_1000&DEV_0054&SUBSYS_1F071028 = "symmpi"
PCI\VEN_1000&DEV_0054&SUBSYS_1F081028 = "symmpi"
PCI\VEN_1000&DEV_0054&SUBSYS_1F091028 = "symmpi"
PCI\VEN_1000&DEV_0058&SUBSYS_1F0E1028 = "symmpi"
PCI\VEN_1000&DEV_0058&SUBSYS_1F0F1028 = "symmpi"
PCI\VEN_1000&DEV_0058&SUBSYS_1F101028 = "symmpi"
PCI\VEN_1000&DEV_0058&SUBSYS_021D1028 = "symmpi"

The HardwareIds can be obtained from the TEXTSETUP.OEM file that comes with the driver.

4. Search for the [SCSI.Load] section and past in the following information

iastor = iastor.sys,4
symmpi = symmpi.sys,4

5. Now build your WinPE.iso

oscdimg -n -betfsboot.com C:\PEsource C:\WinPE.iso

That’s it, your WinPE 1.5 (2005) build now supports SATA/AHCI/SCSI/SAS storage !!