How to determine exactly which storage controller or NIC of a system being recovered by either the System Recovery or Simplified Disaster Recovery products.

Problem

While attempting to perform a recovery using either the Veritas System Recovery Disk (SDR) or the Simplified Disaster Recovery (SDR) disk either or both the storage controller or NIC was not detected preventing the restore. Loading the driver from the manufacturer using the Load a Driver, menu option but the device(s) are still not properly detected. Additionally, it is suspected that the driver being supplied may not be the correct one for the device but verification of this is needed before proceeding.

Error Message

The error messages vary upon version of the product and the hardware device having the issue.

 -- NETWORK CARD: If the NIC driver isn't installed, error messages will relate to network services not being able to start.

 -- STORAGE DEVICE: If the storage driver isn't installed, the Restore Wizard would show no target disks and running the DiskPart command 'list disk' would report no drives are attached.

Cause

The device drivers needed for the Network or Storage device in question are not found part within either the original Plug and Play (PnP) driver library used in the creation of the WinPE recovery environment or those added when the load a driver option is used. In rare occurences such cause of not being able to use the Network or Storage device is either the device's firmware is not sufficient for the driver being loaded, the device is not compatible for the OS attempted to be recovered, or it is damaged or physically connected incorrectly.  

Solution

To verify if the driver attempted to be loaded is correct for the Network or Storage device in question please follow the steps below:

1. After rebooting into the system to be restored with either the SRD or SDR disk, open a command prompt window by selecting Analyze | Open Command Shell Window from the main menu.

2. In the command prompt type regedit and press Enter.
3. Navigate to  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE --> SYSTEM --> CurrentControlSet --> Enum --> PCI. 

NOTE: A list of PnP hardware identifiers (HWIDs), e.g. VEN_8086&DEV_24C2&SUBSYS_80891043&REV_01, should be shown.  This list of devices is dynamically created during the boot process by the SRD or SDR WinPE's PnP hardware detection phase.

4. Until the device is found do the following:

        a. Expand a key and highlight its subkey.  (Usually there's only one.) 

        b. In the right pane, find the string value Class. 

             NOTE: The value should be an intuitive name for a class of devices, e.g. "System" or "Display" or "USB".  Go through these one at a time until the device class in question is found. 

                  For the NIC, it will be 'Net'. 

                  For the storage controller, it may be 'hdc' or 'Storage' or 'SCSIAdapter' or similar.

5. Once the device is found, verify by looking at the value of 'DeviceDesc' if present. 

     NOTE: This 'friendly name' may immediately confirm if the driver being used to load is for the wrong device.

6. Open the string value 'HardwareID'.  You'll see a list of HWIDs, from most specific to least.  Jot down the top (longest) one.

7. Open (in Notepad.exe) the INF file of the driver attempted to be loaded and search for substrings of the HWID from step 6. 

NOTE: Most likely there will not be a full match the full ID that includes the REV_xx. If an exact match for the VEN and DEV numbers was found, the driver is for the wrong OS. Be sure to double-check the system model and refer to the manufacturer's data sheet and the driver downloads area of its website.

Identifying the Network or Storage device manufacturer:

In some instances, the retailer of the system may not have the most up to date drivers for the device (especially if the device's firmware has been updated by other means). To identify the manufacturer of the Network or Storage device follow the steps below:

1. Take the VEN and DEV sections of the HWID obtained from the steps above and enter one in a search engine. 

2. If there are no matches, simply paste the whole HWID into a general search engine query

3. Depending upon results from step 2, remove the &REV_xx, followed by &SUBSYS_xxxxxx , till specific OEM (e.g. Intel, Adaptec, or Broadcom rather than e.g. Dell or HP) has been found.

4. Use this to identify the exact make and model of this device on the OEM's website. 

5. Once the device is found on the OEM's website, find the OEM driver. 

6. Download the drivers, open the driver's INF file, and confirm that it includes a match for the full HWID including the VEN, DEV, and SUBSYS portions and preferably the REV as well.

7. If step 6 is a match, try loading this new downloaded driver.  If successful, create a custom SRD or SDR disk to include the new driver.