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YashyFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Does sysprep and then using ImageX make a copy of entire machine (inclusive of device drivers?)

hi guys,

I'm using an application called Ivanti Landesk to deploy captures images of our Windows 10 laptops. All of the laptops are the exact same make/model (Lenovo Thinkpad X280) and after updating one to Windows 10 20H2, after deploying it, the other laptop came up with a blue screen after every single restart and I think it may well be device driver related.

I'm currently doing this:

1. Installing latest Windows 20H2 with all drivers.
2. Installing the Lenovo application and running all driver updates.
3. Sysprep.
4. Booting into my USB stick with ImageX application and running the commands to make a copy of this onto our servers, which result in a .WIM file. 
5. Deploying this image back using the Landesk application onto other laptops.

The question I have is does the .WIM file I am making consist of all of the Lenovo drivers I installed on the initial laptop? Or does it remove them during the sysprep?

Any help here would be appreciated.

Thank you
Yashy
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Scott Silva
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I usually run sysprep with the generalize option when deploying devices and let the system reload drivers on first boot...

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ASKER

Thanks for responding Scott. I did the generalise option also. But my question is once you sysprep, then use ImageX to make a copy of your copy of the operating system, will that image be inclusive of all the device drivers you installed before? And when you say you let the system reload drivers on first boot, can you elaborate please?
All the device drivers that Windows knew about before sysprep are now included in the WIM file and can be loaded as needed when the image is deployed.  It would likely be more productive to post the information on the bluescreen since the codes associated with it can often (but not always) indicate where the problem lies.
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ASKER

Thanks Lee.  The error code I had was wdf_violation? 
The system is working PRE sysprep?  Consider verifying you have the newest drivers.  If you do, try to DOWNGRADE the drivers to a slightly older version for the specialized hardware you're installing.  Sometimes drivers are buggy and old ones work better (though they may have other security issues).
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ASKER

Yeah the system works fine pre-sysprep. Which is really weird. It's once it lands onto the other machine the errors happen. I do wonder whether it is the USB adapter connecting the ethernet may be the issue. Is it worth me installing Windows 10 20H2, but without any of the specific Lenovo drivers? And instead let Window take care of that?
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Lee W, MVP
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I found the root of the problem. Steps I took:

1. Looked at Youtube videos and almost every single one of them said 'uninstall the Bluetooth driver'. Didn't work.
2. Every single forum I read or video mentioned hpqkbfiltr.sys being the culprit. In Lenovo, that doesn't exist. So it wasn't that.
3. Downloaded the application 'WinDBG' and ran it to analyse the memory dump file. The result of the violation was to do with a file called 'esif_lf.sys'.
4. The original computer I had imaged, did not have such a file name in its drivers directory. So, what was it? The application I am using called Landesk (by Ivanti), has a process where you can select whether you want hardware drivers to be injected from its resource of drivers. This was selected. When I looked deeper, the drivers were old. I went to the Lenovo site and redownloaded them and assigned them back to this application. I re-deployed with newly injected drivers and voila....all worked. The driver for esif_if.sys is related to the intel dynamic platform and thermal framework which needed to be updated.


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