Devcon.exe during OSD

So for an unknown reason the latest Wifi driver supplied by Microsoft for the surface 3 has caused issues when the device is attached to our domain. After many hours / days of trouble shooting I found out it was the Wifi and the actual driver causing the issue. The old driver from 03/15 worked fine so it was just a case of installing this and making sure the OS uses it. The problem being that when you install Windows 10 it uses the more recent driver and being a MS product they of course supply this as default.

To make sure the OS uses the selected driver you can use the Devcon.exe tool, so the first step is to install the windows WDK which you will find in the link below.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/dn913721.aspx

Once installed you will need to copy out the devcon.exe from this location

C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Tools\x64

Then copy to a location of your choosing, create a package without a program in SCCM.

In my case the INF file I need to install is contained in the driver package that I’ve created and added in my task sequence, you can of course point this to a different location. You will find installed drivers in C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\mrvlpcie8897.inf_amd64_f9e04b0abc4d6ef9\mrvlpcie8897.inf

If you want to find the Hardware ID you will find this in device manager under details-property- hardware Ids

I would advise to test this on a computer before adding it to your task sequence and if it changes the driver ID then you know your information is correct.

In my case I am doing this on my OSD task sequence. Once your driver packaged is complete you need to add a Run Command Line which you will find below, The INF information will depend on the device and or driver you are using, the key part is cmd.exe /c devcon.exe -r install

cmd.exe /c devcon.exe -r install C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\ FileRepository\mrvlpcie8897.inf_amd64_f9e04b0abc4d6ef9\mrvlpcie8897.inf PCI\VEN_11AB&DEV_2B38&SUBSYS_045E0002&REV_00

Surface 3 Wifi troubleshooting

After many hours of troubleshooting trying to figure out why the surface 3 running windows 10 would only update group policy successfully 50 percent of the time I finally found the answer, the WIFI DRIVER.

The fix is to not install the latest drivers from Microsoft but to actually install an old one which are from msi Surface3_150504, This has solved my intermittent logins and group policy issues. You only need the old WIFI and Bluetooth drivers ,I had no issues using the latest drivers for other hardware.

Something to take note of when it comes to doing windows updates make sure you don’t just update your surface automatically as it will include the latest firmware and drives for the device, use WSUS/SCCM to manage what you deploy and wait for Microsoft / Marvell to come up with a fix.