Comments on: Making a WinPE CD with HP SmartArray Raid Drivers

By: Mike Ward

Mike Ward — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:29:03 +0000

Actually the easiest way to do this is just to download ‘extpart.exe’ from Dell’s support site and use that to extend the system partition… it works in the same basic fashion as diskpart. it works with all OS’s, but the actual executable you download is a package that can only be extracted on x86 systems, however once you have the extracted files, they CAN be executed on x64 systems successfully.

BasementJack says:
Thanks Mike, I’m glad you’ve had good luck with this tool and thanks for telling me about it. I’d also considered using gparted, or partition magic, but in this particular case, the system was a production system, and the company did not want any 3rd party software used for the expansion. I am sure if we had been using Dell servers, they would have been ok with extpart.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:39:58 +0000

Thanks Andrew for the info!

By: Andrew Duffin

Andrew Duffin — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:42:42 +0000

This is good info, but there is an easier way.

Start Win-PE from a vanilla disk or stick, without the drivers you need, then load them on the fly.

The syntax is:

drvload d:\oemsetup.inf

(ie just point it at the driver file set which you have ready on a usb stick or floppy or whatever)

This works perfectly well for mass storage drivers like RAID controllers as well as NICs that may not be in your basic Win-PE build. I used it today on a PowerEdge server’s PERC controller. No problems.

By: Josiah

Josiah — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:01:38 +0000

Thank-you so much for this post. I was scratching my head trying to break down the technet information. Your guide is short and to the point. Just what I needed.

To simplify, in step four the command I used was:
Dism /image:C:\WINPE_X86\WINPE.WIM /Add-Driver /Driver:C:\PromiseXPRaidDriver\OEM24.inf /ForceUnsigned

As I was attempting to add just one specific un-signed .inf driver.