1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Drivers
2. Windows Server Vmware Image
3. Vmware Network Driver For Windows Server 2008

Hi All I have ESX3.5 servers 32bit, and am going to be running Windows server 2008 R2 64bit servers on them. The hardware supports this and I have.

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I'm trying to inject the vxmnet driver into the boot.wim that I got from the sources directory on the installation dvd. I followed these steps: 1. Copype x86 c: winPE 2. Because i want to use the boot.wim from the dvd i copied my boot.wim to c: winPE and renamed it to winpe.wim, hence removing the one was placed there by the copype command 3. Imagex /info c: winPE winpe.wim this said 'boot index: 2' 4. Imagex /mountrw c: winPE winpe.wim 2 c: winPE mount 5.

Peimg /inf=c: vmxnet vmware-nic.inf c: winPE mount Windows Installing INF package: c: vmxnet vmware-nic.inf PEIMG failed to complete the operation with status code 0x800703fb The same error with c: vmxnet vmxnet.inf. The injection works with the default winpe.wim that was placed there by the copype command, but then I have a wrong boot.wim that I can't use in my WDS server. So my question is how I can add this/these drivers to the original windows server 2008 beta3 boot.wim for use in WDS? As far as I can see I am using the EXACT same procedure here to successfully inject VMWare NIC drivers into the sources boot.wim from the W2008 beta 3 DVD.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Drivers

I got my VMWare NIC drivers from the VMWare Server 1.0.3 VMWare Tools ISO image. These drivers work fine in WinPE 32-bit, x64, W2008 32-bit and x64. # Mounting the master image imagex /mountrw d: winpex86 copyofboot.wim 2 d: winpex86 mount # Adding device drivers into the mounted image peimg /inf='D: VMWare Drivers vmxnet win2k vmware-nic.inf' d: winpex86 mount Windows peimg /inf='D: VMWare Drivers vmxnet win2k vmxnet.inf' d: winpex86 mount Windows peimg /inf='D: VMWare Drivers scsi win2k vmscsi.inf' d: winpex86 mount Windows # committing changes imagex /unmount d: winpex86 mount /commit This works like a charm for me.

Edit: Are you sure your boot.wim isn't set read only as a file attribute? I think I discovered what is happening with the default boot.wim file from the vista dvd and why when adding it back to WDS, it doesn't work for a vmware install. After (re)mounting the image to check to see if the drivers were properly installed into the mount Windows System32 DriverStore directories, I see the actual drivers in the FileRepository, but the subsequent.infloc file is missing from the en-US directory. Every driver in the FileRepository has a matching.infloc file in the en-US directory. Both the en-US and FileRepository directories reside under DriverStore, which is the default container for all drivers. Since others have had success embedding the vmware-net drivers into the Server08 beta.wim file and using that as a boot file for WDS, I will try the same. It is frustrating the Microsoft does not include these ubiquitous drivers as part of the default Vista boot.wim!

Windows Server Vmware Image

It is clearly not necessary for the vmware drivers to be in the en-US folder. Presumably because these are OEM drivers not original drivers built into the OS?

Vmware Network Driver For Windows Server 2008

What you missed in your analysis is that for each injected driver, there are two files created in mount Windows inf as follows: oem1.inf oem1.PNF (then 2 for the second oem driver, etc.) If you look inside the oem1.inf, you will see that it is effectively just a renamed inf file for your injected driver. So in my case, vmware-nic.inf having been injected first, I see vmware-nic in the FileRepository folder as you stated, see no.infloc file, but do have oem1.inf and oem1.PNF in the Windows inf folder itself referring to vmware-nic. And just in case you missed it, you do have to mount the second image within boot.wim and insert drivers there (syntax something like imagex /mountrw c: winpex86 boot.wim 2 c: winpex86 mount). This is because boot.wim's second image includes the WDS binaries and is bootable (as you can see by checking boot.wim using imagex /info), whereas the first image is a pretty default looking winpe 2.0 image. That was my own error when first figuring out how to insert vmware drivers.