No Drives Detected, Win11 23H2 Driver Integration

T

TheL1GHTSiDE

New Member
A year ago I created a Windows 11 22H2 ISO using NTLite to integrate drivers into the image so I could boot off the ISO (using ventoy) to install Windows without having to side-load storage drivers every time. Unfortunately I didn't leave many notes for myself so I don't remember exactly what I did. Anyway, I'm trying to do the same thing with Win11 23H2 but the drives aren't visible when I boot off the ISO. I'm not sure what I'm doing differently so I was hoping to get some assistance.

The drivers I have been integrating are OEM WinPE driver packs from Dell & HP as well as the Intel rapid storage technology drivers for 8th-13th gen platforms. All of the driver packs were unpacked into folders. I unpacked the Win11 iso downloaded from Microsoft and opened the install.wim in NTLite. I loaded Win 11 Home, selected Drivers, then added each directory containing drivers separately (Dell, HP, etc). I removed all Windows N and workstation editions, selected to re-apply tasks across editions (drivers), then created the ISO. I attached the preset file with my settings.
 

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  • Win11 23H2 Driver Integration Preset.xml
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The Dell/HP OEM driver pack nightmare over Intel VMD support returns again.

It's possible to integrate different versions of the Intel RST drivers (especially the VMD ones) into your image. But depending on driver ranking, the "wrong" driver is loaded in memory and doesn't find your drive. The old easy fix was switching to AHCI mode in BIOS, but that option isn't available on newer PC's :mad:.

In reality, it's not really an NTLite issue as it's been widely discussed in Dell & HP forums by enterprise-level folks.

Your available options include:
1. Create a model-specific image and don't combine the different storage drivers. Less trial & error, but more images to manage.

2. Fight this battle by trial & error, and figure out which driver sets conflict with each other. I can tell you from browsing the Dell & HP forums, the answers aren't very clear on this. Some users say a specific integration order matters, other say it doesn't help.

Read this for background:
https://www.deploymentresearch.com/back-to-basics-driver-installation-order-in-winpe-matters/
 
Also, just to add a little.
If you have only one drive OR if you have more than one and doesn't use RAID, maybe disabling VMD in BIOS could be a simpler solution.
This is what I have done here since I'm on a laptop with only 1 nvme slot and never messed with RST drivers again.
 
To explore this problem, I wanted to see what HP & Dell were doing with their WinPE driver packs.

HP Client Windows PE Driver Packs | HP Client Management Solutions

HP Image Assistant download and quick start guide
ftp.ext.hp.com

HP does the correct thing, and lists each folder in ascending order – which is ideal since NTLite does a recursive folder search.
Code: 
00 - Intel Serial IO 30.100.1914.3
00 - Intel Serial IO 30.100.2020.7
00 - Intel Serial IO 30.100.2129.1
00 - Intel Serial IO 30.100.2133.4
00 - Intel Serial IO 30.100.2148.1
05 - AMD_Chipset_4.04.12.1948
06 - AMD_USB4_1.0.0.21
20 - RSTe_f6_iaStorS_win8_win10_64 4.5.0.1234
21 - RST 14.8.2.1044
22 - RSTe_f6_iaStorA_win8_win10_64 4.7.0.1068
24 - RSTe_5.4.9.1005_F6_Win10_64
25 - RST 17.9.0.1007
27 - RST 18.36.2.1023
28 - RSTVMD 19.5.0.1037
30 - SmartPqi 63.32.0.64
41 - BayHubTech 1.3.101.1033
80 - AMD_RAID 7.2.0.00057
85 - AMD_RAID 9.3.0.00266

Dell does a terrible job, with their usual "hashed" foldernames which don't even include the real driver description or release version.
I was forced to write a short PS script (based on the Manifest.xml), just to rename the actual folders.
Code: 
6D2KD_A00-00 - Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver 18.7.1.1003
8MM5M_A00-00 - Intel Virtual RAID on CPU Driver 8.0.4.1009 <-- VROC driver
H6V67_A00-00 - LSI MegaRAID SAS 9540-8i Controller Driver 7.723.2.0
KW2XT_A00-00 - Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver 17.11.0.1000
R6VYH_A00-00 - Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver and Application 19.5.1.1040

The first problem you see is HP & Dell don't shared the same driver versions. Dell appears to update their drivers faster than HP.

Based on this mess, combining the two driver packs in a single image will lead to headaches. I would instead directly download Intel's RST drivers, based on the generation (4.5, 4.7, 4.9, 14, 17, 18, 19), and follow HP's example by sorting them in ordered folders with the VMD versions grouped last.

Hopefully that should work out better.
 
garlin said:
To explore this problem, I wanted to see what HP & Dell were doing with their WinPE driver packs. -Snip-
Click to expand...
I have a related question, I think. I had extracted all of the drivers in use from a target PC and simply dumped the directory into NTLite for integration, but Windows asked for a storage driver to proceed during the installation. I narrowed down the exact driver that my Dell requires to boot. It was a "iaStorAC.inf" file located inside a RAID folder. Installing that manually allowed Windows to finally detect its NVMe drive so that I could continue the setup process.

Where can I integrate that driver so that I don't have to use a second USB for a manual installation each time? NTLite provides the option to integrate the driver into the following three choices:

1. Winre.wim Microsoft Windows Recovery Environment
2. boot.wim 1 Microsoft Windows PE
3. boot.wim 2 Microsoft Windows Setup

I assume I should choose option 3? Will this even work at all?
 
Choose #3, Windows Setup. The other two choices are optional (non-Setup PE is included as reference, and WinRE on the live system will import all of the installed Windows' drivers any way).

Now NTLite will perform two passes to integrate the same drivers, one on the install image and another on boot.wim. This saves you the step of loading each image separately, and importing the drivers one at a time.
 
garlin said:
Choose #3, Windows Setup. The other two choices are optional (non-Setup PE is included as reference, and WinRE on the live system will import all of the installed Windows' drivers any way).

Now NTLite will perform two passes to integrate the same drivers, one on the install image and another on boot.wim. This saves you the step of loading each image separately, and importing the drivers one at a time.
Click to expand...
Confirming that this worked! Thanks!
 
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