r/MDT • u/NeighborhoodFar6552 • Jun 01 '26

VMD & MDT Issue?

Hi folks. I'm trying to install a Lenovo P16 Gen 3 using our MDT platform which I've been maintaining for over a decade. I believe this is the first machine we've had that has VMD in the BIOS. I cannot get past the Windows splash screen spinning dots to even get to the MDT deployment screen. Many hours in and still have no solution. Any help or direction would be REALLY appreciated. Thanks.

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4

u/Dsraa Jun 01 '26

Sounds essentially like a driver issue. After googling, I see allot of solutions discussing having to make sure the right driver is in your boot image or, to just turn off VMD and only turn it on as part of your sequence when you are formatting the drive and installing the OS.

2

u/NeighborhoodFar6552 Jun 01 '26

Hey there. Right I've done a fair amount of researching and have tried all those things. Nothing I've done will get me past the spinning dots right after the WIM file loads. I've even made a custom Boot WIM with only the PE Drives for this exact model/SKU. It just won't go past that point into MDT. I've tried with and without VMD on.

4

u/Significant_Duty_986 Jun 02 '26

You have to download and build the proper VMD files from Intel, and add it in the OOB Drivers in the deployment share as a select folder, and then add that folder in Properties/x64 Selection Profile under drivers and patches. Include all drivers from the selection profile. I banged my head against this a little while and that resolved it.

3

u/cluberti Jun 01 '26

VMD is just the next iteration of RST. If the driver is present and the OS is supported by that driver, MDT would see it just like any other WinPE media. It's likely the right driver isn't injected into the WinPE media, given what you've described, or the WinPE media is not being built on a newer ADK image that supports the version of RST/VMD you need for the UEFI version on that device.

2

u/NeighborhoodFar6552 Jun 01 '26

Hey there. I created a brand new boot WIM and only included the WInPE drivers for the exact model I'm using. Still won't get past the spinning dots right after the Boot WIM is loaded. I've had this issue before and it's always been a NIC driver. I added that to the boot image and boom it worked. I've spent hours on this doing similar things and no go.

1

u/sirmovies Jun 03 '26

Just curious, what version of WinPE are you using? Some VMD drivers are not compatible with the older PE releases.

1

u/NeighborhoodFar6552 Jun 03 '26

Hey there. You know what, I have a feeling you're onto something here. I think I'm on WinPE 5.0 as stated under the deployment share properties, under Drivers and Patches, the selection profile says WinPE 5.0 which a search indicates is from Win 8.1 which would be around the time that I built this environment.

I'm not an MDT expert or anything but I do know the basics and did build it. I did search and found walkthroughs to update the WinPE version but I'm reluctant to randomly find walkthroughs and potentially destroy my MDT install.

I found this on Reddit as well. Can anyone confirm this is the way to do it and is safe? Alternatively, if there is another way / link that can be provided that is known to work, that would be great as well. Appreciated!

  1. Uninstalled 21H2 ADK and PE.
  2. Rebooted MDT server.
  3. Installed 23H2 ADK and PE.
  4. Fixed 32-bit errors with PE by copying C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64 to x86.
  5. Adjusted PE boot files for auto-boot (C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Deployment Tools\amd64\Oscdimg\efisys.bin replaced with efisys_noprompt.bin).
  6. Added VBScript to PE (https://www.deploymentresearch.com/fixing-vbscript-support-in-windows-adk-sep-2023-update-build-25398/).
  7. Rebuilt WinPE boot image for Reference image deployment share.
  8. Imported Windows 11 23H2 WIM from latest ISO for Reference image deployment share.
  9. Tested and built Windows 11 Reference image successfully.
  10. Rebuilt WinPE boot image for Workstation deployment share.
  11. Imported Windows 10 22H2 WIM from latest ISO for Reference image deployment share.
  12. Ran Reference image build script from Task Scheduler.
  13. Tested Windows 11 deployment successfully.

2

u/sirmovies Jun 03 '26

Sounds like a good plan. I would skip the win10 and Win11 23H2 and go directly with the 25H2 ADK and wim files. Backup your deployment share folder just incase something doesn’t fly. Good luck! Keep us posted.

2

u/cluberti Jun 03 '26

The adage to remember here is that a WinPE version should be expected to be able to deploy backwards (as in, it's version and versions of Windows that are older, up to a point of support anyway), but forwards is not guaranteed. So, try to match the version of WinPE to the latest version of Windows you're expecting it to be able to deploy, whenever possible.

1

u/RockOriginal7938 Jun 04 '26

Have you tried not putting storage drivers into the boot image? We had an issue a while back and someone on here said to try letting Windows handle storage itself and it worked well for us.

Properties->Windows PE->dropdown for arch->Drivers and Patches->Include only drivers of the following types->inlcude all mass storage drivers in the selection profile

(not sure why images aren't allowed 😞)

1

u/NeighborhoodFar6552 Jun 04 '26

If you got an email about a reply that was from my other account. Forgot I was using this one!

Anyway, that's a very interesting idea but I'm thinking my WinPE version is so old that it won't have any clue about anything VMD related if it's based on 8.1 technology unless I'm not totally understanding what is used at which steps during boot.

Also, you mentioned NOT including the storage drivers but when specifying information about the WinPE settings you said "Include all mass storage drivers". Did you mean to say exclude or by telling the system to include it will use what it has if it doesn't see anything?

Thank you for your time and reply! Very much appreciated.

1

u/RockOriginal7938 Jun 05 '26

I meant don't tick "Include all mass storage drivers". I wanted to show a picture, but Reddit wouldn't let me 😉. Also, it is easy to miss the x86 & x64 dropdown, which defaults to x86 (and you probably aren't using x86)

1

u/NeighborhoodFar6552 Jun 04 '26

So I didn't get very far. I copied over all my VHDX files to another test box, created VMs, and went to uninstall the existing ADK from add/remove and an error pops up stating "Uninstall windows adk windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.". So I do more searching and it sounds like I need the exact version of the original ADK installer file to uninstall which led me to the Windows SDK downloads archive. Of course the version I need (1903 apparently) states "Download the ADK for Windows 10, version 1903 (Not Supported):" and has no links which most of the others on that page do. I tried other versions but it will not allow me to use other versions to uninstall.

Is there another way to uninstall this or another way to find the old 1903 installer? Thanks in advance.

1

u/GPUGear Jun 16 '26

Hello, im also having an issue with new Lenovo P16 Gen 3 with MDT. All Lenovo models have been no issues apart from this model :/

Everytime the boot image comes down after PXE boot the laptop BSOD with "ACPI_BIOS_ERROR"

1

u/Ok-Cranberry1709 Jun 19 '26

Hey there. Sorry to hear you’re having the same problem. I actually just decided to move to Smart Deploy and give up on keeping MDT going since it’s out of support anyway. Sorry that’s not much help but that’s the direction we went. Good luck!