Short Version: Is there a way to impose a delay so my USB 3.0 DVD drive can get ready before WinPE gives up and I get the "Unable to read task sequence configuration disk?" It seems to be a timing issue, because it does work sometimes. Other times, if I press F8 as soon as the GUI is loaded and try to connect to E:, I'll get "The system cannot find the drive specified.". I might get this 4 times before I can connect, but by then the 'Unable to read' message has appeared.
Long version: The Dell Latitude E7240 does not have any built-in optical drive. I have a USB DVD drive that I use to image this model. It's been working flawlessly until I did some software package/driver cleanup last week. I blame it on the clean up just because you're supposed to look at the last thing that changed, but the more I think about it the more doubts I have.
Previously, my boot image had the USB 3.0 driver for the E7240 from the A03 Windows 7 Driver Pack injected into it. I deleted those drivers because my task sequence was now using the A06 version drivers. The image on the E7240 was failing with"The instruction at NxNNNNNNNN referenced memory at NxNNNNNNNN." It dawned on my then that I probably deleted the USB 3.0 drivers the week before. I built a new boot image, based on the previous one, and injected the new USB 3.0 drivers. Now the 'reference memory' message is gone, but most times I get the 'unable to read configuration disk' message.
The USB 3.0 drivers work...sometimes. I don't WANT to replace them with the older drivers. I'm trying to simplify my driver inventory, not keep a bunch of one-off drivers. I'm hoping that I can impose a delay and allow the drive to come online, and I'm hoping that will make it more reliable.