Latitude 5420 PXE/Windows PE video resolution

Seeing the same with are 5420 we just got in as well. How is your WinPE load times? Are build on these is half the speed of the 7200 2-1 they will be replacing when running the SCCM task sequence and using the WinPE Win10 DRIVER CAB VERSION A23 PR4K0_X00-00

Our techs just received the first Latitude 5420 yesterday and tried to image it. I'd already added the driver CAB to our task sequence so I figured it would work just fine, like the previous 5400, 5410, etc.

But then we saw the same issue - the video resolution is set really funny, to the point where our UDI Wizard windows were mostly unusable and they couldn't see where to click, etc.

I just had them at least walk through the wizard by using defaults (hitting enter) and then doing the Alt-F (Finish) on the last screen to get it going, but it popped up a different error... I think it was 0x0000003c so I'm not sure what that was about.

While researching, I ran across some Reddit threads talking about the exact same video resolution issue. It sounds like Dell is aware of a problem related to doing a PXE UEFI boot, and probably the GOP drivers. A BIOS update may be the fix for this, once Dell actually fixes it and releases a new BIOS.

On the other hand, booting off a USB device is fine, so now I'm faced with the idea that we might have to export our task sequence to bootable media and have them use that instead of PXE, just for the 5420's.  Because although we update BIOS in our task sequence, that happens in the full Windows boot, not in the WinPE section. I'd have to do some redesigns just for this model if I wanted to have BIOS updated in WinPE, then continue on with the UDI process.

Meanwhile, there are other reports about the RAID/AHCI setting. I think most recent models have come set to RAID mode by default, so we have some steps in the task sequence to switch to AHCI if needed. But others reported problems if they weren't doing that because I guess Dell forgot to include the RAID drivers in the CAB for these xx20 models, or maybe that was just in their latest WinPE, but then fixed that in the recent A23 WinPE cab?  Either way, it sounds like Dell didn't really test out the imaging process on these models before shipping them out to customers.  It would have been readily obvious during a PXE boot into WinPE that something was terribly wrong, so I'm not sure how they missed that.

Updating the Bios in PE used to be easy with the Dell tool Flash64W.exe but I was told by support there is no support for this now with no alternative given.  Each unit we have got has raid set in the bios as default changing this has no effect on the build speed or ability to complete. In the log I can see a driver issue that I and going to try and pinpoint what driver it is. But agree sounds like enterprise testing was not top of mind. 

Regarding the RAID/AHCI issues then we had similar problems with the 5410 model.

I actually had 30 units shipped to a remote office. 10 of them installed with out any problems but the last 20 would not installed - the WinPE image could not see the storage.

Changing from RAID->AHCI solved that problem but the odd thing was that all 30 laptops were part of the same shipment and they all had RAID set as default and all running the same BIOS version. So why it was a problem on some but not all, I cannot say for sure.

I suspect that the problem might be with the WinPE Driverpack from Dell where it seems that several versions of the same storage driver sometimes is included. If WinPEs driver detection mechanism then picks the wrong version sometimes an end up with a version that doesn't support the current chipset, that might explain the odd behavior.

And we also have the same issues with the resolution - you can see my findings here: Latitude 5420 and display resolution when booting from WinPE image (SCCM deployment) - Dell Community

Regards,

Martin Moustgaard

Just a quick followup on the problem with the video resolution.

I just got a call from Dell ProSupport that this problem should be fixed in the next BIOS update for the 5420 scheduled to be released in April.

So a fix should be on it's way

Regards,

Martin Moustgaard

That was what our Dell reps said as well - they were going to release a BIOS update for the xx20 models to address the video issue.

They also pointed me towards an article they put out about the RAID driver problem. It sounds like the workaround is to go into the Intel RST driver you're injecting and actually disable (rename/remove) the INF files for everything but the RAID driver. From what others have said, it must be due to Windows picking the wrong driver (AHCI) instead of RAID.  I'd guess that's a problem from Intel since it's their driver, and maybe they included the PCI ID of the RAID subsystem in the AHCI INF file...

One other issue with the new models that we brought up was that BIOS setup passwords are now required, by default, to contain special characters and numbers.  During our imaging, we set the BIOS password but since it doesn't have a special character the CCTK command was throwing error 60 (which shows up in SCCM as hex error 0x0000003c).

The solution for us was to run additional CCTK commands like:

cctk PasswordConfiguration --PwdSpecialCharRqd=Disabled

(you can do the same to disable the upper/lower/numeric requirements that are also now enabled by default)

So keep that in mind... what's odd is that the documentation for the Latitude 5420 says those BIOS settings for passwords are supposed to be disabled by default, but I asked one of our techs to check another machine and they were also enabled, out of the box.

I'm seeing the same video resolution issue on 7420's that I just got in.  It is usable, but only barely.

I also had the RAID/AHCI issue.  I've tried including various drivers on my WinPE image, but ultimately found where someone said that there's no issue switching it to AHCI, especially since it's just a single drive, so I guess that's what we will have to do on all of them.