KACE 2000 and Dell Venue 11

I have been spending the last month plus trying to figure out a way to capture an image to the KACE and deploy and image from the KACE with a Dell Venue 11.  It hasn’t gone so well, but I have come up with a “sort of road map” to help those trying to accomplish the same thing I am.  I will summarize what I have learned and if anyone needs more detail, please let me know.  Most of the information I have gotten from a long, long search on the internet from dell sites, it ninja, and even using some other sites to acquire all this information.  I know for some, you would like my step by step as to how I got where I got (as I know I wish someone had done that for me), but there is quite a bit of information, so like I said, I will summarize.  And Again I can try and help to the best of my ability to get you to the point I am at now.

Before I get started you should make a backup over the factory image (2 USB flash drives recommended).  To do this there are some docs out there that work well but in a nut shell, you have to 1) create the recovery drive on USB flash drive 1 (this is the bootable drive that will allow you to restore the factory image you create and 2)create the system image on USB flash drive 2.  Also make sure secure boot in the bios is disabled. INSTRUCTIONS: FOR THESE STEPS: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/5132-recovery-drive-create-usb-flash-drive-windows-8-a.html (THESE GUYS ARE AWESOME)

This way if anything goes wrong, you will be able to restore back to the original factory default.

1)      NETWORK CONNECTIVITY to THE KACE: The biggest problem I am seeing is that people are unable to connect to their KACE device using the Dell Venue.  I have had no issues with this and this is what I have been using to be able to boot with using WINPE 32x bootable flash drive. I have been able to boot to my KACE with the dell venue 11 (5130) model using either a USB dongle (SIIG 2.0 Fast Ethernet Adapter) or the Dell Latitude 10 Docking Station. 

2)      DEFAULT FACTORY IMAGE: The default factory image that comes with the Dell Venue has a few different partitions, one of which is a 5-6GB partition for system images.  When I load up into windows, I try to delete that system image partition to free up some space, by using partition program called EaseUS Partition program.  Every time I try and delete this partition and add the additional space the OS partition, it freezes up on me.  Everywhere I have read says that I should be able to remove that system image partition, and yet when I try, it FAILS., which is why I have moved onto the next step: Create my own image from a OEM copy of Windows 81.

3)      IMAGE CREATION: Because the default factory image has 4 different partitions, I used a win32 OEM 8.1 DVD and created my own image.  The problem here is you need to create a special UEFI Windows 8.1 boot 32x boot disk.  IRONICALLY, UEFI is generally 64x, but a 32x is needed and I was able to create a bootable Win 8.1 boot disk using 32bit UEFI. My best guess is because my machine has 64bit architecture, but the OS we are using is 32bit, it required a 32bit. I went through the Windows install process and wiped out all partitions, and created a new one.  When I delete all partitions at the windows setup, I then do a new, partition it as one partition, but then windows make a couple of hidden partitions , one of which is the EFI partition (100MB), the other is some 300mb partition. I then installed Windows and now have a working Windows 8.1 32bit non factory edition that I am going to use for this process (IT is important to make sure if you do this, that you have a OEM DVD, if you don’t, then you are having to pay for the licenses.. you can request a OEM license through possibly Dell or your vendor.

4)      IMAGE CAPTURE: I was able to successfully login and capture my image using my Win 32X PE boot drive and capture the image.  Using the compressions it was a bout 3GB+ (but remember this is for testing so there are only a few apps on it). Image capture successfully and I now see it on my KACE.

5)      IMAGE DEPLOYMENT: In the initial tasks on the KACE I go into the image and the prerequisite and add the following for this image:

a.       Create single partition

b.      format c

c.        install MBR for Windows

 Using the 32x WINPE boot disk, I get into the KACE and push the image back down to another machine.  The push is successful, until I reboot, and this is where trouble begins. I boot up and get the issue right as it starts up:

No bootable device found
Press F1/Volumeup to retry reboot

Press F2/VolumeDown key for setup utility

Press F5/Home key to run onboard diagnostics

This is where my road ends.  Once I have created the image and have tried pushing it down multiple times, I always get the above error.  I have messed around with the pre-requisites as explained in Step 4 on the KACE, but still I get nothing.  I have to believe the problem has to do with the EFI partition that is automatically created when I install the windows OEM copy.

That is where I stand now. Please if anyone can add to this great, or if someone needs additional information, please let me know.  I have a bout 350 venue 11's that need to go out and imaging them this way would be awesome if we can get it working