Hey,
This one of the features that we put into our iPXE Anywhere service that is being developed. It will detect versions of specific items and then take immediate action before booting the ConfigMgr boot image. So allows booting not only WinPE but also MS-DOS .vfd's and .iso's etc, not all firmware updates run in WinPE sadly. But before we went down that route I had a bolted on actiongroup in the TS that detected "stuff" that needed to upgraded and then used variables/conditions to boot to WinPE and a few other things. It wasn't pretty but did the trick. So a reboot to another (x86) WinPE was forced by a bunch of command lines which then did the right actions. (Outside the TS). The TS env was then saved and the machine booted back the x64 boot wim and the sequence continued. It worked "OK-ish" but as so many firmware bits used other (MS-DOS, Linux etc.) forms of delivering the firmware upgrade we went down the route to incorporate it into iPXE Anywhere instead. And as Niall points out, x64 EFI will never boot x86. So we had to depend on the machine being in BIOS mode and then resetting it back to EFI. It was just too ugly. Lenovo's view on the subject: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Enterprise-Client-Management/UEFI-update-in-64bit-WinPE/td-p/1114083 But what I remember from the top of my head the task order was something like: 1. Make sure the initial machine starts in legacy mode (to allow x86) 2. Get the new WinPE image onto the box (HD) somehow, there are nice ways and ugly (hard coded) ways. 3. Set the HD boot info to point to the new WinPE image 4. Ensure that the new WinPE image runs the command you want to by modifying the .wim image and making sure that you get back to WinPE & the sequence. 5. Force a reboot, think the trick here was to not use the built in reboot as they fiddle with stuff, instead I think I launched a command that somehow ended the TS entirely (by conditions) or just bluntly killed of the winpeshl.exe process and causing WinPE to reboot. 6. Let the x86 WinPE to the FW update, then reboot back to x86 PE 7. Use cmdline tools to set BIOS mode back to UEFI & set the right boot loaders etc. It was not trivial to do it this way and I decided against "productizing" it as it was a little too far out on the "unsupported" highway. I was also playing with the fact to let ConfigMgr return a mandatory "run this first" TS but never really got around to get good results from that. //Andreas ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Niall Brady <[email protected]> Sent: 09 May 2015 23:49 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MDT-OSD] Winpe bitness and OS Deployments yeah that's fine for legacy but it won't work for 64bit UEFI devices, they won't boot with an x86 boot image. On Sat, May 9, 2015 at 10:53 PM, Keith Garner (hotmail) <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: If I recall correctly, you should be able to install an x64 image from x86 WinPE, dism /apply-image, /add-package, and /apply-unattend should be bitwise agnostic. Is there a specific problem you are seeing? From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of Daniel Ratliff Sent: Saturday, May 9, 2015 11:15 AM To: '[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>'; '[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>' Subject: RE: [MDT-OSD] Winpe bitness and OS Deployments We can't even do it in WinPE with Lenovo. -----Original Message----- From: Underwood, Bob [[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2015 11:30 AM Eastern Standard Time To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: RE: [MDT-OSD] Winpe bitness and OS Deployments We’ve been asking Dell to support 64-bit WinPE for BIOS flashing for years now, and not made any headway. You can do it before the OS is applied on HP devices, but we had to move it to the middle of the process for Dell machines. (We moved to 64-bit media a couple of years ago to support UEFI and Windows 8.) From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Miller, Todd Sent: Friday, May 8, 2015 5:12 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: RE: [MDT-OSD] Winpe bitness and OS Deployments The BIOS updates might be required for Bitlocker, and I would like to be able to pre-enable bitlocker before the OS is laid down to take advantage of the time savings. From:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Daniel Ratliff Sent: Friday, May 08, 2015 3:48 PM To: '[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>'; '[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>' Subject: RE: [MDT-OSD] Winpe bitness and OS Deployments Move your bios update to inside the os? -----Original Message----- From: Niall Brady [[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Friday, May 08, 2015 04:40 PM Eastern Standard Time To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [MDT-OSD] Winpe bitness and OS Deployments why update the bios at all, unless it's needed, is it ? On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 10:29 PM, Miller, Todd <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I used to use 32bit WinPE to deploy both 64bit and 32bit OSes. But something happened a few months back where I had to switch so that the bitness of WinPE matched the OS being deployed. I think it was caused by driver injection problems, but I can’t remember exactly. I feel like I read the advice on DeploymentResearch.com, but I can’t find the post now. Anyway, matching the bitness fixed my problem. Now I am in a little trouble with this because I would like to update the BIOS on Dell computers during OS Deployment and it looks like Dell only has 32 bit versions of the BIOS updates available. I think I cannot run a 32bit executable to update BIOS while I am booted into a 64bit WinPE version. I could briefly boot into a 32bit WinPE boot disk while updating the BIOS and then continue on in WinPE 64bit, but the only two options for rebooting are into the Full OS or into the WinPE boot disk assigned to the Task Sequence. Is there a way for me to reboot into a specified WinPE image, update the BIOS, and then reboot back into the WinPE that is assigned to the task sequence? Is there a way out of this problem? One thing I can think of would be to do the BIOS update as a prehook before the real Task Sequence starts… ________________________________ Notice: This UI Health Care e-mail (including attachments) is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2510-2521, is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any retention, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. Please reply to the sender that you have received the message in error, then delete it. Thank you. ________________________________ The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain CONFIDENTIAL material. 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