nashi63

OK, found the problem which seems to afect Dell Poweredge and Precision systems. It's dependent on Windows 2003 RIS to transfer from the interview process to the file load. Once I ran up a 2003 server with SP1 everything was fine. Thanks to anyone who read my problems and gave some though to an answer. Hopefully someone else will not be stuck on this issue for so long.

thanks cluberti, just to confirm that you never got to the windows setup screen once you completed the interview. Is that correct? In the past when the drivers have not loaded the setup continued but when it completed could not boot because it could not access the volume. This problem is a little bit different as you never even get to the point where it loads anything. Thanks Nashi63

I'm a bit new to this forum so please forgive any obvious misconceptions I may have about RIS, which mostly I love. I have been running an Unattended RIS install for XP for a couple of years with great success. The IT staff just love it, however I have been lumped with a Dell Precision 490 with Intel Serial ATA Raid that just ain't workin. After I complete the interview normally Windows Text Mode setup launches and away she goes. Not this time. I have had the same trouble with a Poweredge 2850 with a SCSI Raid card, so it looks as though RAID is the issue but I have trawled the net for solutions including a number of attempts at textmode setup and still I can't get the thing to work. I tried Bashrat's driverpack and integrated the drivers into i386 and loaded a new RIS image onto the RIS server, still no good. I switched off OemPreinstall=No so that I could get the F6 prompt and run it via floppy just to get over the glitch, but I don't even get to that section of the installation. I have spoken to Dell Gold Support about it but it doesn't sound like they are familiar with the problem. So now I turn to the real experts out there. Have any of you seen this problem and even more important have you found a solution?