Comments on: Step-by-Step: Upgrading BIOS during LiteTouch Deployment, for Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:47:02 +0000

Hi,
i tried ths script and it works fine, really except die BIOS Upgrade of HP 6200 Pro, which needs to be updated either wirth DOS FLASH, BIOS USB Flash or HPQFlash (this is intended for unattend / silent install). HPQflash doesn’t run under WinPE 3.0 or 4.0, the subsystem needed to support the image type is not present. first i thought it was a missing .NET oder DAC Feature, but it isn’t.
i have no idea, but it seems that you guys are very successful using HP BIOS Upgrade within WinPE?

Kind Regards

Chris

By: Bill Derer

Bill Derer — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:24:43 +0000

I have quite a bit of info in my DEFAULT section to control the initial stages of the build process. Is there another method for doing this outside the customsettings.ini file, or can I run the Default section befor the INIT section and have it still work?

By: somahony

somahony — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 08:14:45 +0000

Not even a case of being not supported now. More and more of Dells BIOS updates have a prerequisite of a certain BIOS level before the latest can be installed.

On the Latitude E6410;
If you’re on A01, you first install P02 before and installing a later rev.
If you’re on A03-A08 you have to install A09 before moving on to a later rev (currently A11).

This type of thing is making it harder for admins to manage client BIOS updates.
Keep up the great work.
S

By: Mikael Nystrom

Mikael Nystrom — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 23:42:59 +0000

Yes, I know, that is a bummer. There are ways of solving this, I normaly just apply the latest, not supported, but…

By: Mikael Nystrom

Mikael Nystrom — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 23:38:47 +0000

No, the sections have a purpose, if you look on top of the customsettings.ini you will se Priority= and that will explain for the ZTIGather script what sections that should beexecuted and also in what order all the variables should be applied, as a general rule of thumb is First Writer Wins

By: Bill Derer

Bill Derer — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:31:55 +0000

I’m having an issue where the INIT section of the customsettings.ini file is skipping certain settings I placed down in the DEFAULT section.

Should I simply combine everything under DEFAULT, or is there another option available to me?

Thanks!

By: somahony

somahony — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:28:35 +0000

I’m in a situation where I want to update the BIOS of clients having their OS rebuilt, but Dell are recommending that we upgrade the BIOS sequentially so if a client is on A02 I can’t go straight to A10. Any ideas on this? Brill post and keep up the good work!

By: Jon Roberts

Jon Roberts — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:09:32 +0000

I dont have any lenovo’s but thats sounds doable… the deployment share scripts folder is on Z: – my litetouch installation is always X:… but depending on when you launch the bios upgrade… there may be NO C: drive. So your script will need to copy all files to X: and run from there. Be sure to use full paths… the %CD% variable will be useful there… and double qoutes around any paths in case there is ever a SPACE in the path …
so you can change the levovo section back to the original code which specifies the model specific script to launch….

I took out the SPACES in model names in my dells to avoid having to deal with spaces in the path… but double quotes should take care of that issue if you choose not to do so…

REM ThinkCentreM91p.cmd
@echo off
echo extracting bios files…
“%CD%\xxxxx.exe” /S
echo copying bios files to X drive…
copy “%CD%\xxxxx” “X:\Bios”
echo running bios upgrade from X drive…
“X:\Bios\wflash2.exe” “”X:\Bios\IMAGE9h.ROM” /clr /ign

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:48:21 +0000

Hi,

It seems that the Lenovo Bios Upgrade command line utility doesn’t allow me to run the process from a share network. I must run it from the C:\.

So it should be like:
1. Extract the installer with the command: xxxxxx.exe /S
2. Run the flash command line from: C:\SWTOOLS\FLASH\xxxxxx
3. Remove the folder SWTOOLS

What do you think?

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:55:30 +0000

Hi again,

My sModel is “ThinkCentre M91p” so I have a space btw “ThinkCentre” and “M91p”. How can I put all the path in brackets?

To avoid the “space” problem for a moment I moved the files one level up and changed the script removing the sModel reference but it still doesn’t work either through the LTI command line (F8) nor under Windows which I have the following message:
*********************************************
Return code from command = 3
ZTI ERROR – Non-zero return code by ZTIBIOSUpgrade, rc = 1
*********************************************