Yes, that used to be true and used to be the advice -- Always use x86 as the boot image when deploying either x64 or x86 OSes.
Sometime in the last 6 months problems began to crop up while injecting certain drivers into the offline Windows x64 image from the WinPE x86 boot environment. Somehow the x64 driver was not being detected correctly or was not inserted correctly from the WinPE x86 boot. As I mentioned, I can’t remember the exact specifics but upon searching for the problem, I ran across some advice on deploymentresearch.com that recommended abandoning the old advice of always using WinPE x86 and switching to making the architecture of WinPE match the OS being deployed. (I can’t find that advice in the blog either) This did solve my driver injection problem, but has led to my “can’t update the BIOS” problem. BIOS needs to be updated prior to OS deployment because the BIOS sometimes needs to be on a certain version in order to activate the TPM chip and the TPM chip needs to be activated before bitlocker and MBAB can be turned on and bitlocker and MBAB need to be turned on before the OS is laid down. So waiting until we are in the full OS is not an option in that instance. We are leaning towards Bitlocker on all client systems, so the fewer exceptions I have the better. I think I am leaning towards building the BIOS update routine into the pre-execution hook area, which is still in WinPE x86. There are a few models I’ve run into like new Apple MacMinis that must boot from x64 WinPE only, but they are so far, pretty rare. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Garner (hotmail) Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2015 3:53 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [MDT-OSD] Winpe bitness and OS Deployments 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]] On Behalf Of Daniel Ratliff Sent: Saturday, May 9, 2015 11:15 AM To: '[email protected]'; '[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]'; '[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. 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