I'm using SCCM 2007 R2 OSD to deploy Win 7 x64 to an HP EliteBook 8440p with the Intel 82577LM gigabit NIC. I'm able to boot into WinPE, but the NIC wasn't recognized. I've tried using drvload [inf] to manually load the Vista x64 driver, but that didn't work. I also tried the vista x86 driver without success. Finally, I just kicked off the setup.exe that was bundled with the drivers and that resolved the issue. Now I have an IP, but how can I start the task sequence from the command prompt?

If you have advertised the Task sequence to the target computers(unknown computers),then you shoud be able to see the avilable task sequences for the computer. If the task sequence which are set as Mandatory,will be loaded automatically and not possible to select. //Eswar Koneti @ http://eskonr.wordpress.com/

I have advertised the task sequence to all unknown computers, and the laptop in question is fresh out of the box. Once I boot to WinPE, I manually load the NIC driver, then run ipconfig to ensure I have an IP. If I close the command prompt, the computer will ext WinPE and reboot a few seconds after that.

Hi Kenneth, You must inject the driver into the WinPE image inside SCCM. You can not install the drivers into an WinPE environment. Have a look at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680959.aspx for general information about Boot Images and how to manage them. The http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680705.aspx page will guide you how to inject a network driver into the WinPE image.Kind regards Tim Nilimaa IT Consultant at Mindgrape (Sweden) Please remember to mark this answer as helpful if it helped you.

SOLVED: Tim was correct about injecting the driver into the image, but was more the finishing touch than the solution. In the end, I found that the PC, although 64buit capable, was booting to the x86 winpe image. Once it booted into winpe, I immediately hit F8 for command prompt, and then used drvload to load the Win7 x86 NIC driver, before it tried to kick off the task sequence. I made it just in time, and the TS started successfully. After identifying that I now had the correct driver, and that I was mistakenly troubleshooting the x64 winpe image, I used SCCM to inject the NIC driver into the x86 image, and success! Thanks to Tim and Eswar for your assistance - it is much appreciated!

I've pretty much tried everything in this thread and everywhere else I've read, but I can't get the NIC driver for the Dell Optiplex 990 to integrate into the SCCM build process. 1) I downloaded the cab files for both the x64 and x86 drivers from Dell's site 2) I downloaded the x64 and x86 Intel(R)82579LM NIC drivers (that's what it shows as the installed NIC out of the box in the Device Manager) from Intel 3) I created driver packages for the 990 x64 and 990 x86 platforms along with the Intel NIC driver and injected them into their respective boot images and distributed the updated WIM files. (When I click on the Properties of the boot image I can see in the drivers list that the Intel(R)82579LM drivers are injected.) But when I go to image the 990, it can't seem to find the NIC drivers. If I press F8 to troubleshoot and type IPCONFIG, I get nothing. Does anyone have anything else I can check?