Troubleshooting - Hardware
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      3. Troubleshooting - Hardware

      ggRock System Image Windows Driver Installation (Missing Device Drivers)

      Problem

      General system instability, USB device issues, or other issues centered around inability to use devices, or devices non-functional.

      Solution

      Ensure that all vendor-supplied drivers are installed.

      1. Boot a system to ggRock.

      2. Install the drivers for that system from the vendor website (e.g. Dell, HP, Alienware, etc).

      3. Shut down the system.

      4. Commit writebacks for that system.

      5. Test booting that system to confirm all drivers are now installed and all system devices are functional.

      6. If you have other system models in your center, test booting those system types to confirm that no issues arise from the drivers being installed for other system models.

      If your computer system was hand-built from off-the-shelf components, it may be necessary to install drivers from the manufacturer of each component (e.g. video driver from nVidia/AMD, chipset driver from Intel, etc).

      If you do not know which drivers need to be installed, it will be necessary to visit the Windows Device Manager snap-in in order to view driver versions, as well as hardware missing drivers.

      Accessing Device Manager to Determine Driver Needs

      1. Log into a system as an administrative user.

      2. Click the Start Menu, then type "Device Manager", and click the "Device Manager" entry in the "Best Match" section of the Start Menu.

      3. Look for any devices with a yellow triangle containing a black exclamation mark in them - these are devices that are missing drivers entirely. Install the drivers for these devices.

      4. If you are unsure where to locate a driver for a device, or if the name of the device is of no help, right-click on the device and choose "Properties".

      5. Click the "Details" tab, then click the "Property" drop-down, and select the "Hardware Ids" item.

      6. Within the "Value" listbox, locate the "VEN_" lines which indicate the Vendor ID of the device in question. Also note the "DEV_" lines which indicate the Device ID for the device in question.

      7. There are numerous ways to translate a Vendor ID and a Device ID for a given piece of hardware into human-readable information, one of which is to visit the PCI Device Repository and look up the Vendor ID and Device ID there. In our example, the Vendor ID is VEN_1002, with the Device ID being DEV_6611. Locate the Vendor ID in the list and click on it, then locate the Device ID in the list and click on it.

      Vendor ID:

      Device ID:

      8. In our case the vendor is AMD, and the device is Radeon 520 OEM. Visit the AMD website to download and install the driver for this device.

      9. Once installed, shut down the system.

      10. Commit writebacks for the system, then boot this system and any other systems in your center with differing hardware to confirm there are no compatibility issues.

      NOTE 1:

      Some devices such as network drivers or display adapters may have a driver installed by default from Microsoft, but oftentimes these drivers are only good enough to get the system booted and should be replaced with vendor-supplied drivers, or with the latest version of the driver available to ensure system stability and device functionality.

      In the case of this display adapter, the installed driver is the "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter" which is supplied by Microsoft, rather than the AMD driver supplied from the vendor of the hardware. This driver should be replaced with the vendor-supplied driver.

      NOTE 2:

      If you need to update the network driver, special consideration will need to be taken.

      Please refer to the following support article for the process:

      Adding a New Machine Type to a ggRock Image using the ggRock Seamless Boot Procedure

      General outline of updating a network driver

      1. Write your system image to a physical hard drive.

      2. Install the hard drive in your computer system needing updated.

      3. Boot from the internal hard drive now installed in that system.

      4. Update the network driver.

      5. Create the VHD using the ggRock IC Tool.

      6. Copy the VHD to an external hard drive.

      7. Connect the external hard drive to your ggRock server.

      8. Import the new system image to your ggRock server using the ggRock Web UI.

      9. Configure at least one system to boot from your new system image to test functionality.

      Additional Information

      When a system image is created in ggRock, it is akin to a clean install of Windows on a given computer.

      This means that there are no drivers present other than the ones that are supplied by Microsoft, or that can be pulled from Windows Update at the time of image creation.

      Depending on your computer model(s), it may be necessary to visit an example of each unique computer model in your center and install the appropriate drivers when booted to ggRock, then commit write-backs from each of those systems.