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Support OSD over Wireless

As more and more devices are shipping without wired network adapters, and more business areas are going "wireless only," the traditional ability to reimage a device in place is getting scarce. This is especially true in primary and secondary education institutions.

Please provide support for adding Wireless drivers to WinPE, and the ability to provision wireless network profiles for the WinPE phase of the task sequence to enable imaging over wireless network connections.

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Nash Pherson (MVP) shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
Noted  ·  AdminBob Mac Neill (Software Engineer, Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager) responded  · 

Updating this item as there’s support for Windows 10 In-place upgrade using the Cloud Management Gateway – see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/plan-design/changes/whats-new-in-version-1802
Adding this in case some folks missed it or Win 10 In-place upgrade addresses their requirement.

I recognize this it not full OS Deployment as there’s no WinPE phase (WinPE has no wireless stack)

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21 comments

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  • David Kenney commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    There is a walk through that I went through to get OSD over WiFi working to some degree. You can't PXE boot, but if you boot USB/CD media it works. It also works if you start the TS from the MECM client. We set up a special hidden SSID that is not generally known
    and remove the profile for it at the end of the TS. https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/326463f7-d0e5-45fb-a13b-40ac46684bfc/successful-wireless-imaging?forum=configmanagerosd

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Thanks for the reminder about the Cloud Management Gateway Bob. That doesn't help my organization automate logging into our corporate WiFi during OSD though. And downloading that much content from a CMG is fairly cost prohibitive anyway. No WiFi support for OSD just means more ChromeBooks.

  • Herman van Drie commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    WinRE (imho equal to WinPE) does have WLAN API support.
    In the mean time, I already build my own bare-metal USB stick with 802.1x authentication over wireless in WinPE using WinRE WinPE-WiFi OC.

    Why won't the Windows team just make the OC available to the ADK!?

  • Shaun Cassells commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    PXE over WIFI hurdles and details we would need
    1) Hardware
    a. OEM Hardware -> No official support I can find for Dell PXE support on WIFI
    b. Some notes about WoWLAN may make it feasible as the Wi-Fi card will listen to WOL packets while “off”
    2) Network
    a. 802.11x – DHCP SNOOPING will need ot be disabled
    b. Peer sharing will need to be enabled. Not LWAPP
    3) Transfer
    a. PXE is TFTP and will apparently not work over WIFI
    b. iPXE supports HTTP/HTTPs file transfer
    4) Boot.WIM
    a. Will need supported Wi-Fi drivers
    b. iPXE injects specific WIFI drivers
    c. OEM would need to provide this

    This is going to be really slow. LOL

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Our organization is in need of WiFi support for WPA2-Enterprise with user-based authentication during WinPE and local OS stages in TS. We do full OSD refreshes annually/semi-annually and our technicians currently roll hundreds of laptops in carts to an imaging center to be re-provisioned over wired connections using a handful of available USB NICs. I've tested methods of using WinRE.wim with WiFi drivers and NetSH wlan commands to get around this scenario but I cannot find a way to support the user-based authentication methods in a wlan scenario. We've started to transition to Chromebooks with G-Suite to get away from this overhead but we still have a substantial number of Windows mobile devices that are a significant burden. Adding this feature would be very useful.

  • Angus Carson commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    That's all very nice Bob and thanks for updating the status of this suggestion. However it's the support for wireless in the WinPE stage that's really important here. The disaster that is the current state of docking stations for modern tablets and ultra-books with all sorts of issues making PXE booting a nightmare it would be a great time to get this working for full OSD over wireless.

  • Benjamin Sanders commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    More and more manufacturers are building devices without a traditional NIC, this is a must for "modern management"

  • JD commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Microsoft, can you please add support for this? A lot of the new laptops are coming without network ports.

  • Barry Duncan commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Since the advent of Microsoft's own hardware being released without a traditional hardwired NIC, this is 100% a necessity.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Lots of votes and over 2 years old. I'm beginning to think 'UserVoice' is a black hole.

  • Dennis Warren commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This is really needed in SCCM. I have many users who do not use Ethernet connections. Delivering USB Media to the users or purchasing Ethernet Dongles is really prohibitive in large scale deployments. I work on OSD, so that I don't have to visit the workstation or manually support a deployment. Without wireless support of OSD, I no longer see the point of it. My PC deployments are 60% wireless. Although I have to get my current deployment done, I will be considering a replacement to this product shortly afterward. We have about a year to go before we replace / upgrade hardware. If SCCM won't fit our needs, it's out.

  • Herman van Drie commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I already achieved this item with 802.1x auth support:
    https://twitter.com/hvandrie/status/875303380977164288
    Uses Network Access account for EAP-MSCHAPv2 authentication on the wireless connection.
    Whenever I can I'll publish the required coding on GitHub.
    Requirements:
    - WinRE media
    - WiFi drivers
    - C# application
    - Network Access account configured in ConfigMgr that allows access to wireless network
    Allows deployments over 802.1x Enteprise wireless networks using "Access content directly from a distribution point when needed by the running task sequence" option in deployment.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    We are looking at deploying the surface pro which has no wired network having this ability would be a big step forward

  • Jason Kuhn commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I have over 30,000 Windows devices on my network that do not even have a wired network adapter. Wireless imaging is an absolute necessity for us

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