Windows Preinstall Environment Now Supports the IEEE 802.1X Protocol

By default the Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment, also referred to as Windows PE, does not come with support for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.1X authentication protocol. This is valid for both the 2.1 and 3.0 versions of Windows PE. Or was valid, since the Redmond company has taken the necessary steps to correct this issue. What this means for customers is that they will now be able to authenticate a switch configured for IEEE 802.1x authenticated network access for both Windows PE 3.0 and Windows PE 2.1 clients. All that users need to do is access and implement a hotfix offered by the software giant.

“Since the dawn of time, Windows PE (WinPE) has not had any support for the 802.1x authentication protocol. This meant that any network deployment of Windows via a network secured with 802.1x was a non-starter, causing headaches for a few on my customers; I actually had one customer that ran new network cables to a majority of the desks in order to be able to deploy Windows XP over the network,” revealed Daniel Oxley a consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services Spain.

In fact, there are no less than two hotfixes offered by the Redmond company, one for Windows PE 3.0 and the other for Windows PE 2.1. “Thanks in part to a colleague of mine who worked on this, Microsoft has released hotfixes that now add 802.1x support to both WinPE 2.1 and WinPE 3.0,” Oxley stated.

Microsoft has designed the Windows Preinstallation Environment to be an accessory for IT administrators to get computers ready for a full Windows installation. In this regard, Windows PE offers a bare-bone Win32 platform that comes with limited services, built directly on top of the Windows kernel. In addition to being able to prepare machines for Windows deployments, Windows PE can also be leveraged to copy disk images from a network file server, as well as for the launching of Windows Setup.