MDT Error- a connection to the deployment share could not be made the following network device did not have driver installed.

Question

MDT Error- a connection to the deployment share could not be made the following network device did not have driver installed.

Loganathan R 171

Hello All,

I am getting error as following looking for your assistance. IMG_20230113_095741752 (002)

Locked Question. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

Christian 36 Reputation points MVP

2026-06-20T15:14:45.3733333+00:00
When booting client machines into an MDT environment, the deployment fails with the error:“A connection to the deployment share (\mdt\DeploymentShare) could not be made. Using the traditional aapporach to inject drivers only will fail. As you can see from common forum advice, standard WinPE storage/network driver packs from Dell or Intel were injected into the deployment share. Even attempting to update local machine drivers via Dell Command | Update fails because local OS updates do not impact the isolated WinPE RAM environment.

The breakthrough had nothing to do with missing hardware drivers. Instead, it was an environment trust issue caused by modern Microsoft security hardening. The issue was successfully resolved by the below s shared here:

Patching the WinPE: Mounting the WinPE boot image via DISM and injecting the latest Windows Cumulative Update (CU).

Updating Secure Boot Trust: Ensuring the 2023 Secure Boot certificates were fully updated within the boot media so WinPE could successfully authenticate and establish a secure SMB network connection to the server.

Regenerating Media: Running a complete regeneration of the deployment share boot images and replacing the WIM inside Windows Deployment Services (WDS).

I hope you will find this comment useful. Else, feel free to reply and I will make myself available to answer further queries.
章可为(Zhang Ke Wei)/CN) 经营支援 Team 0 Reputation points

2026-07-30T02:37:18.0533333+00:00

My Lenovo ThinkPad T470 has the same issue. However, I injected the official driver into the PE image, and by loading the image locally on the server, I was able to locate the corresponding driver for that model.

I also tested the driver on the client side as follows:

Running commands such as ipconfig in CMD confirmed that the network card driver was not successfully loaded in the current PE environment.

After manually loading the driver from a USB drive on the client, the network connection was restored and communication functioned normally.
NutonicFox 0 Reputation points

2026-10-27T23:09:24.64+00:00

Hello,

This is an old post but I've recently run into this issue within our environment and I wanted to share a potential solution for anyone stumbling onto this forum.

After verifying the right driver package for our standard laptops were imported correctly into our MDT's out of box drivers folder within deployment workbench. I was able to verify the drivers were in fact being loaded onto the Laptop via the command line that shows up after you hit cancel on the error you see above.

Turned out the ADK/PE installations on the server were from 2004 and unable to load the current 25h2 drivers necessary for our laptops lan port to function.

Upon uninstalling both Windows ADK/PE then installing family version 26100 of the ADK/PE, and utilizing the x86 file renaming work around. MDT now functions as expected.

This is my first post on the Q&A forum. If anything is wrong or could be elaborated on feel free to let me know.

Goodluck!

1 answer

Christian 36 Reputation points MVP

2026-06-20T15:14:45.3733333+00:00

When booting client machines into an MDT environment, the deployment fails with the error:“A connection to the deployment share (\mdt\DeploymentShare) could not be made. Using the traditional aapporach to inject drivers only will fail. As you can see from common forum advice, standard WinPE storage/network driver packs from Dell or Intel were injected into the deployment share. Even attempting to update local machine drivers via Dell Command | Update fails because local OS updates do not impact the isolated WinPE RAM environment.

The breakthrough had nothing to do with missing hardware drivers. Instead, it was an environment trust issue caused by modern Microsoft security hardening. The issue was successfully resolved by the below s shared here:

Patching the WinPE: Mounting the WinPE boot image via DISM and injecting the latest Windows Cumulative Update (CU).

Updating Secure Boot Trust: Ensuring the 2023 Secure Boot certificates were fully updated within the boot media so WinPE could successfully authenticate and establish a secure SMB network connection to the server.

Regenerating Media: Running a complete regeneration of the deployment share boot images and replacing the WIM inside Windows Deployment Services (WDS).

I hope you will find this comment useful. Else, feel free to reply and I will make myself available to answer further queries.
章可为(Zhang Ke Wei)/CN) 经营支援 Team 0 Reputation points

2026-07-30T02:37:18.0533333+00:00

My Lenovo ThinkPad T470 has the same issue. However, I injected the official driver into the PE image, and by loading the image locally on the server, I was able to locate the corresponding driver for that model.

I also tested the driver on the client side as follows:

Running commands such as ipconfig in CMD confirmed that the network card driver was not successfully loaded in the current PE environment.

After manually loading the driver from a USB drive on the client, the network connection was restored and communication functioned normally.
NutonicFox 0 Reputation points

2026-10-27T23:09:24.64+00:00

Hello,

This is an old post but I've recently run into this issue within our environment and I wanted to share a potential solution for anyone stumbling onto this forum.

After verifying the right driver package for our standard laptops were imported correctly into our MDT's out of box drivers folder within deployment workbench. I was able to verify the drivers were in fact being loaded onto the Laptop via the command line that shows up after you hit cancel on the error you see above.

Turned out the ADK/PE installations on the server were from 2004 and unable to load the current 25h2 drivers necessary for our laptops lan port to function.

Upon uninstalling both Windows ADK/PE then installing family version 26100 of the ADK/PE, and utilizing the x86 file renaming work around. MDT now functions as expected.

This is my first post on the Q&A forum. If anything is wrong or could be elaborated on feel free to let me know.

Goodluck!

Answer 1

AllenLiu-MSFT 49,441 Microsoft External Staff

Hi, @Loganathan R

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Q&A forum.

It seems your boot image is missing the WinPE driver for that NIC.

Please try to do the following:

Grab the enterprise driver pack for the correct version of WinPE for the OS being deployed. Extract it, then import the WinPE drivers to the boot drivers folder.
Update the Deployment Share (will re-generate the boot images)
Import the updated boot image to WDS (or whatever you use as a PXE server)

The similar thread for your reference:

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2133949-a-connection-to-the-deployment-share-could-not-be-made

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Loganathan R 171 Reputation points

2023-01-17T11:20:22.77+00:00

Hi @AllenLiu-MSFT ,

Thanks for your reply. I have injected the most recent version of drivers still getting the same issue.

Regards,

Loganathan. R
AllenLiu-MSFT 49,441 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2023-01-20T08:03:10.6233333+00:00

Hi, @Loganathan R

If the most recent version of drivers does not work, you may try to go to the network card manufacturer's web site or do a search on the hardware ID to track down a current driver.

You may check the the part:Network drivers in below article:

https://4sysops.com/archives/resolving-a-connection-to-the-deployment-share-could-not-be-madeerrors-in-mdt/
Loganathan R 171 Reputation points

2023-01-25T02:43:20.2733333+00:00

I have get an updated driver from the OEM as well manufacturer getting the same error and also raised a ticket with OEM for this issue.

I am having one question here after injecting the Driver and Updating the Images on the MDT. Do we need to replace the image on the WDS as well?

Please correct me if mentioning anything wrong.