WinPE support since Anniversary Update?

[qp6019352]

Hi,

the knowledge base says only the Ethernet driver works in WinPE:

http://support.displaylink.com/knowl...for-windows-pe

But is this still true after the Anniversary Update? The knowledge base says there's some more native support for USB graphics since the Anniversary Update:

http://support.displaylink.com/knowl...and-windows-10

So, would USB graphics work in WinPE on WinPE version 10.0.14393 and above (after having added the driver to WinPE)?

[AlbanRampon]

Hello,
If by support you mean we will solve problems and it is part of our ongoing automated and manual test, then no, WinPE is still not supported. Adding an OS is very costly and we have not received enough requests or compelling use cases for it to make the backlog today.
If by support, you mean can work, then I don't know we haven't tried. I'll ask tomorrow night if my contact at Microsoft knows if WinPE has the underlying graphics structure.
WinPE is very restricted and doesn't include all features of the full OS.

Should you have time and willingness to try, you can look in the Corporate Deployment section. Then, download the .INF based package. In it, you will have a folder called Win10RS1-RS2 including both the 32- and 64-bit drivers.

Kind regards,
Alban

[qp6019352]

Originally Posted by AlbanRampon

you can look in the Corporate Deployment section. Then, download the .INF based package. In it, you will have a folder called Win10RS1-RS2 including both the 32- and 64-bit drivers.

Aren't these the same .INF files that come with the .EXE?

What's the point of hiding the separate .INF and .MSI packages behind a corporate download portal?

Could you please add the .INF and .MSI packages to the standard public download page?

Originally Posted by AlbanRampon

Should you have time and willingness to try

Tried it.

Injecting all the .INF files into the boot.wim of WinPE 10.0.14393 as per the MSDN instructions was working.

However:

- The .INF files of driver version 8.2 M1 did cause WinPE 10.0.14393 to hang upon booting or even showing BSODs upon booting
- The .INF files of driver version 8.0 M3 still caused WinPE 10.0.14393 to hang upon booting sometimes, but succeeded in booting most of the time and did not produce BSODs
- Once booted, the network did work (which it did not previously without the injected .INF files)
- The monitor did not work (or it wasn't active at least, obviously WinPE does not have a GUI to choose which monitor should be used, maybe the monitor would work if one could choose which monitor should be active, not sure)

Originally Posted by AlbanRampon

I'll ask tomorrow night if my contact at Microsoft knows if WinPE has the underlying graphics structure.

Thank you, would be interesting.

[AlbanRampon]

Hello,
Licensing and redistribution agreement is one reason.
The setup.exe does other things the INF can't do.
Also, as the driver does NOT send (installation) ANY metrics to DisplayLink server, we can't know the size of deployments to prioritize work if we don't get any data.

I already receive technical support tickets with people not sure what driver they should download for Windows when there is only one.
I do not have the intention to add drivers most users don't care about and confuse more people, creating unhappy end users and more tickets to reply to.
It is not up to the user to care about what build of Windows is running: one executable that does what is needed.

DisplayLink driver does NOT have any kernel mode component of the driver on Anniversary Update onwards, so something else is BSoDing or the wrong driver was installed (proving my point above). You would have to analyse the memory dump to give what is crashing, but you've already demonstrated it doesn't work anyway
Knowing which element is creating the BSoD is unlikely to be enough to make things work, especially if the OS doesn't allow you to manage displays.

Kind regards,
Alban