SSR 2011 - need to figure out NIC driver for Recovery

[Herbo]

OK, we have a workstation to bare metal recover.  I have a good image from SSR's last run.  The workstation is an Acer Veriton, a bit over 3 years old, with Windows XP - SP3.  I've verified twice with Acer's own TechSupport that I do have the correct NIC drive copied to a flash drive.  In fact I have all four driver sets off the Acer OEM install but I know mine is a RealTek controller.  Start the Recovery CD, it doesn't find a driver automatically - that's expected.  In SSR UI, I point SSR to the flash drive and it sees the driver(s) after navigating to the correct folder on the flash drive.  Double Click to open/load. 

SSR reports the driver's in place and has ben succesfully loaded.

But, no network.  I can't browse to the NAS because I get "Network adapter not found". (or words to that effect).

I also went to the RealTek website and downloaded and unzipped their latest driver supposedly for this NIC.  Placed this on the flash drive.  Same result.

I still have access to the "sick" HDD and so I tried navigating to the Windows\DRV\ folder.  Same result.

Word of caution for ANYONE reading this:  If you're going to use a network share, better make darn sure you can successfully load this driver.  Take the extra step -now- by firing up the CD on your equipment and find/locate/load the driver now while you still have a chance.  Take pains to save the driver to seperate media and then repeat these steps with the CD and seperate media.  Don't do what I did - that is: trust that everything will work because you'll be disappointed.

So, good people:  What's the secret of getting SSR to load the NIC driver?  Can I use some sort of a "generic" NIC driver that SSR will like?

Hope someone can point me in the right direction...

H

[Markus_Koestler]

SSR 2011 SRD is built on WinPE 2.1, so give the drivers for Windows 2008 or Windows Vista 32-bit a try !

[criley · Accepted solution]

Exactly as Markus says above. The 2011 recovery disk is based on WindowsPE 2.1 which is 2008/Vista based so the driver needs to be compatible with this OS.

The driver also must be 32bit only.

Sometimes you have to experiment before you find the right driver for your hardware.

[Herbo]

OK, I'll try that.  It sort of makes sense.  I was looking for something XP, but now I see that WinPE 2.1 is quite different.

One response said to try Windows 8...  I don't see Windows 8.  I do see Win 7.  I will try Windows 7 (x86) as well as Vista (x86).

I wonder if that's covered somewhere in the SSR documentation?  I certainly can't find it and wonder how other users are contending with it.

I'll post back with results tomorrow.

Thank you both for your contributions.

H

[criley]

One response said to try Windows 8...  I don't see Windows 8.  I do see Win 7.  I will try Windows 7 (x86) as well as Vista (x86).

Not sure what response you are referring to here? The latest version of SSR (SSR 2013) uses WinPe 4.0 which is Windows 8 based. Maybe that's where that suggestion came from...

[Herbo]

See this in the first reponse:  SSR 2011 SRD is built on WinPE 2.1, so give the drivers for Windows 2008 or Windows Vista 32-bit a try...

OK, it's good to know that a new PE is out there.  Best to save the old boot CD because Win 8 isn't in the future where I'm involved.

Now, here's the answer: Markus and Chris were spot on.  But I had to trial and error because no one at Acer could give me the correct driveret from their website.  But the clues given here really helped.  And I found something in the UI that was stumping me.  Kinda goofy of me...

The first thing you run into is the correct driver for your NIC hardware.  And I did finally find one a RealTek v12.0.xxx for Vista x86.  Now back to the main panel and on the left side, greyed out in a columns of selections is a "Network" tab/button.  It looks greyed out so I didn't click on it - up to today.  Click on this and you're presented with more network config menus and an important one leads you to an IP config screen where you can set a static IP, the framework our network is built on.  I failed to do this before -because- those buttons over there don't look like they're active.  They are and now I know.  So the driver is loaded, the services are started and the IP scheme is resolved.  Next you have to map a network drive.  You can't simply browse to your network resource.  But you can set up a mapped network drive which means, reponding to a quick mapping item, drilling out and down through the NAS, username and password, and now your network mapped drive is where the image files are, SSR will find them now and this is where your recovery will be taken from.

All's well now.  Thank you all for your patience and assistance.

H

[Markus_Koestler]

Lucky you ! Please mark this post as solved now !