WinPE keyboard issue with new Poweredge

Hello

Go into the system BIOS and check the USB 3.0 setting. It is listed under integrated devices. According to the manual USB 3.0 should be disabled by default. If it is enabled then the USB may not function in the preinstallation environment or other similar environments with limited functionality. If it is already disabled let me know and I'll look at this again.

Is this a new intel / USB driver problem we're going to face from now on when imaging systems?

Most issues related to USB with our newer systems are because of the introduction of USB 3. USB 3 may need to be disabled until a driver is installed for it.

Thanks

Thanks a bunch for the reply. That was one of the latter things i checked, i should've mentioned it.  It shipped with USB 3.0 disabled in the BIOS. So the issue was first experinced with USB 3.0 disabled.  As a last resort I did enable 3.0 and specifically added the 3.0 drivers to my WinPE build, this unfortunately didn't help.  That's when i reached out to the forum here. I went in afterward and set it back to disabled.  I wish I had a driver pack specific to this machine that would defnitely work with WinPE. I only need it to 'see' the OS drive and have network + keyboard.  With that i can pull a 2012 R2 image down to it.  Maybe I've just made a mistake in the drivers I've chosen from the support page, I'll try a few more revs today.  Again thanks for your continued support in working with me through this issue.  

The KVM is a TrippLite B040-016-19 not sure the firmware.  I tried taking the KVM out of the picture by plugging in a regular usb dell keyboard directly into the server and ran into the same issue, no keystrokes.

I'm considering looking into building WInPE using the latest version of the WAIK which would use an 8.1 x64 source.  The WinPE I've been using is a 32bit Win7 source.  With a 64bit 8.1 source I would think drivers for a box like this would be easier to integrate. It seems silly to have to take it this far just to get the USB keyboard.  The other thing I may do is grab an 8GB flash drive during lunch and put the 2012 R2 files onto it seeing if it boots up and has USB that way.  We don't have an external optical drive around here at work believe it or not.  Though I have two at home. Fun stuff when resources are better at home. lol  

What is the status of the SIPs. Are they showing online in the KVM interface when the server is powered on. What KVM is it and which firmware revision is it at?

How did you ever resolve this?  I just got in an R630 and I can't install an OS because once I boot to an install environment there are no inputs for unknown reasons.  I can not for the life of me figure out what Dell has done to break keyboard and mouse input once you boot into an install environment, but it's obviously crippling and needs attention.  This is oddly the only thread I have found about the fact that these servers are seemingly unusable as they won't recognize input devices once booted.  Everything is fine in the EFI/BIOS level, and while booting from USB works so it's not a universal USB failure, there is clearly something wrong here hardware side that needs to be fixed promptly...  I have tried the Win 7 and Win 8 PE environments, verified the USB3 thing in EFI is disabled, tried different keyboards and mice (which all work fine on other systems and in setup, the boot environment works fine on other systems, it's clearly a crippling hardware compatibility issue with these new servers....  What up Dell??

Been quite a while since this post so I apologize but I'm not even sure what I did and failed to report back as I should have.  Short-term I suspect that I probably gave up and installed the OS using a stick instead of a DVD.  I do know that I ultimately had to break my images for workstations out into two separate branches T3500 and older  and T3600 and newer.  If I didn't do this and had chipset drivers for both installed on the same image then the USB keyboard and mouse wouldn't work properly or at all on the systems. Intro of the T3600 is the point in time where USB3 was first supported so I think that had to have something to do with it. There's two pieces to this, there's the images, mentioned above and the WinPE disc (or stick) I use to restore images (I use ghost from the WInPE enviornment but it could be any imaging utility)  getting back to the WinPE again having both chipsets installed may have been the root cause, I was blasting every driver known to man into that WinPE build. If I slimmed down the drivers I suspect it would be OK.  Here's a test, use the OS DVD or have the OS converted to a stick instead of a DVD, then boot from that with just the native drivers ifthe USB keyboard works then it indicates to me driver conflicts on the WinPE. Of course if you haven't added drivers to WinPE then that theory goes out the window.      

Thanks for reporting back. It makes me think server boards and the proper drivers to see the USB on them may only be native to the server OS source.  Using the WinPE built off desktop sources may be the issue, but as you said and I'm thinking the same thing, can we even build PE from a server source? It's nothing I've heard of anyone doing.  Anyway it is weird stuff these days for deployment people, and everyone's QA dept doesn't seem to be helping matters. Look at MS, on Win10, you aren't even asked to type in a PC Name anymore when installing from a DVD let alone from a sysprepped image.  

Well I got something to work, but the reasoning here is beyond my comprehension.  I assumed that the WinPE 5.1 (i.e. Windows 8.1 PE) was the SAME core as for Server 2012.  Apparently this is NOT the case, and this new Dell hardware is ONLY compatible with 2012, not Win8.  I used the old USB boot tool to put the 2012R2 ISO on a Flash drive and that had a mouse when it started up so I could install.  Real pain that for some reason the 8.1 PE environment is not playing nice, and I couldn't find any drivers that might be a trick to getting it to work with this hardware.  I also see no indication that you can get a PE kit for 2012R2, only for 8.1.  So much for using a custom WIM for installs, it's base OS followed by a day of updates...  Thanks Dell. 

Pretty sure the hardware issue is confirmed by the fact that once Server 2012R2 is installed, there are no less than 100 (yes 100) unknown system devices that need drivers that are not in 2012R2, nor can they be found online.  Clearly there is a lot of special new stuff on this generation of server.  All my Dell servers prior to this have every device known at install with 2012R2, this thing is a disaster.  Now to try to figure out the best way to get these things identified and installed.  I wonder if OMSA will work on it and clean these up...