I was having some trouble getting my BartPE disc to work correctly with Dell’s new Optiplex 755 desktop, due to the fact that it comes with a new Intel Gigabit NIC chip (82566-2, specifically). I had added the new drivers as downloaded from Dell’s website, to no avail, getting a “Cannot install network devices” error at bootup.

As it turns out, Dell’s drivers (I’m not sure about Intel) do not work correctly when using Windows Server 2003 to base your BartPE CD. The solution, then, is to build the BartPE CD using Windows XP SP-2.

I’ve heard tell that the drivers downloaded directly from Intel do not work either; you have to use Dell’s.

This means that I’m going to have to maintain two separate BartPE CDs for maintenace work: one for desktops, and one for servers (since Dell’s PERC5/6 drivers do not get along with XP). A bit of a bummer, but I’ll get past it.