LAN ports change after Sysprep

[benderTX]

I am setting up an Win7 image for mass deployment.

The units being installed to has common hardware with 4 LAN ports. These ports are labelled and assigned their purpose (with static IPs).

Infrequently and seemingly at random, the ports will shuffle after an install. What was consistently LAN port 1 is now LAN port 3, LAN port 2 is now LAN port 4, etc. The pattern does not seem consistent, and again the behavior seems at random but enough to block deployment.

I venture this issue is occurring during the Windows sysprep generalize process, possibly when Windows is assigning network adapters to drivers (?).

I have seen some comments that the answer file entry "PersistAllDeviceInstalls" can remedy this, but I have not found conclusive evidence that this is true.

I would like to ask if anyone has insight and / or advice in this matter.

I sincerely appreciate your time.

 

[hang-the-9]

Yes this can happen depending on when the hardware is detected in Windows. I don't know of any way to force that in a specific order. Same thing happens when you plug in several external hard drive during boot, they may be assigned different drive letters.

 

[benderTX]

Thank you Hang9. I wanted to reply with my thanks and offer some more context in my search.

I know PersistAllDeviceInstalls carries over the plug-and-play devices (bypasses uninstall and fresh recognition). DoNotCleanUpNonPresentDevices keeps existing (does not purge) unused drivers from the system.

As these flags are prescribed when deploying to the same hardware, including mass deployments, I imagine subtle hardware changes like MAC addresses are accommodated.

I think my next step is to figure out how the Windows network adapters are attached to hardware, to see if there is consistency at that level when carrying the network drivers over.