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I am not sure if WinPE 2004 ramdisks are supported, I only thought WinPE2005 with Win2003 SP1 as the source binaries were supported? Dunno... atleast that is what I am running! Best Regards Lars Wurm

Hi! I assume u r aiming for getting the "Message Queuing" part in IIS installed? On a Win2003 that is: 1. Create a something.inf somewhere, example root of c:\ 2. Put the following in the something.inf file: [Components] Msmq_Core = On Msmq_HTTPSupport = On Msmq_LocalStorage = On Msmq_MQDSService = On Msmq_RoutingSupport = On Msmq_TriggersService = On Close and save. 3. Open up a cmd.exe and run the following command: sysocmgr /i:C:\WINDOWS\inf\sysoc.inf /u:c:\something.inf (of course there is switches for quiet mode) Seems to work.. also, the newest ref.chm & deploy.chm seems to have more info on that. Over and out from tha Sausage Eater!

Lo dude... I also have alot of DELL PE 2800 & 2850 running at our place with DRAC cards attached to them. Took me a while get the solution in place. I am also running RAM boots from WinPE2005 on these machines... However, I didnt have the same problem as u r mentioning. The only problem that I encountered was that the DRAC cards allocated a drive letter that it shouldnt. Check if the drive letters are in place so that it doesnt colide with the WinPE2005 drive letter mappings. I managed to solve it by.. 1. Upgrade the firmware level of the DRAC cards to a version that will allow u to force the DRAC virtual drives to be displayed as floppies and not as the default CD's... In my case it required me to run a tool named racadmin.exe which could be extracted from the DELL CD's and that will allow you to manipulate the DRAC properties accordingly. Good luck to ya and get back on how it goes and how u managed to solve it....

Well, I am using RIS for approx 30 Dell models which all share a common drivers structure. This way we can support all installs of all models (supported by the company) with a single image. The most annoying part of the design and implementation of RIS is trying out that the drivers are working correctly each time u make a single change that might inflict on all models. I recommend u going for a "flat" RIS WinXP SP2 image and dont use external tools to do the trick. I know I am prolly gonna get called names in here (cause of the suggestion) but I prefer having a good overview of what I am doing and it is harder to tell if an app is causing the problem or if it yourself that is causing it.. there are lots of good inputs in this forum as well on the MS site regarding RIS. However, first time around, it always take a coupple of hours before u get the hang of it. Good luck to ya.. Tha Sausage Eater...

Hi guys.. I dont that the OemFilesPath entry is valid for RIS installations (only CD based), as the $ folders are directly coded to be found below a certain level within each flat image as long as u specify the OEMPreInstall = Yes entry. My recommendations would be to either: 1. Minimize the drivers. s***ty job but in most circumstances it will work, the only family of drivers that I have not been able to remove .exe and colour adjustment from is Nvidia stuff. Especially Intel drivers are usually nice to handle this way (imho). 2. Or accept that the Drv folder strcuture is copied down to the local drive and then at the end of the install, create a .cmd / .vbs that will delete it for u. Sure, it will take a minute more of your time, but I dont work on a hour basis.. Dunno if the OEM2 folder is valid either, maby, havent tried it. However, from my view, a "flat" image is a generic image, for all models that it should support, so why narrow it down to specific models via the .sif file when u can clean it afterwards. On a Win2003 the OEMPnPDriverPath entry support up to something like 2000 characters so that one wont be the limitation... Good luck to ya, best regards! Tha Sausage Eater...

Yes u can, however, by changing the corresponding entry: Repartition = No u get the option to choose which partition to install the OS to, but instead, it wont be fully automated anymore as if u were to use the "Yes" value instead. Best Regards Tha Sausage Eater

I am not a 100% certain I follow u... are u using riprep images or flat images? I assume you are using flat images as you are to talking about "base" - images. Perosnally, I am using "flat" images installation with RIS, and I have a SP1 image and one SP2 on the same RIS servers and there is no problems. I dont know anything about Nlite so I wont go into that. If you have a SP1 image and wanna move to a SP2 image on the RIS server, what you basically have to do is to slipstream the SP2 .exe into a RTM or SP1 version of the WinXP source: < update.exe -S:C: (assuming i386 of WinXP is located on the C: drive) > I would just remove the SP2 image, and redo the whole thing again. Try to do it manually (as not using third party software) and see if makes any diffrence. P.S Just got hold of the WDS beta from Microsoft, the upcoming replacer of RIS as we know it. Seems cool. Best Regards Tha SausageEater

Hey fbcesco... I dunno really what u mean, but if u wanna launch an installation of WinXP and be able to create variables, before the actual winnt / winnt32 part, for things like: 1. IP 2. Name of computer 3. Model (?) Then, if this is the case I really suggest that u try WinPE (if u have access to it) as u have great possibilities of scripting (WSH) in this environment. From inside WinPE u could create a HTA app. which could present u with the creation of an unattend file for the upcoming installation, where u only have to supply the "variables". Same thing can be done from DOS (it just doesnt look nice) with the concept of asking questions and pipe the entires / answers to a text file (unattend) which could then be used for launching the installation. Or the most obvious... Leave the desired "variable" fields open in the unattend file and the installation will pause and wait for u to fill em in, but that is cheating...

Hmm, do u mean before the winnt.exe installation or ? that would be dos or winpe! Or do u mean during the installation of the Win32 OS? I assume that u r wanting to install an application (and not something within the OS). OS parts components are normally handled in the [Components] section of the unattend file. I would say that u could launch the set commands from the [GuiRunOnce] section of the unattend file, that would be my choice.

Well, first of all the command for viewing and setting variabels in Win32 is <set>. Run <set /?> for more info. However, u need to make sure if the variable needs to globally avail or if it only should be available during the installation (some application does these kinds of stuff...), u need to create the vaiable and then remove it again.. once u have created the variable u can try it from a command prompt by for example echo %variablename% and see if it works.. cu

See... Now why didnt I think of that! Poor imagnation I guess.. Thanks Mats, I will go ahead and try to boot the .iso from RAM instead and see where I end up this time. Until then.. from tha Sausage Eater.

Redid the whole thing, rebuilt the WinPE image and RIS and everything else... same stuff. The WinPE 2005 .iso file works when in a VPC environment, when burning the .iso to a CD and booting of it, it only crasches on the Win2003 RIS machine (the actual WinPE boot from RIS works, but it is when it is trying to execute the winnt32.exe installation of WinXP SP2 from the local source that it fails with "Out of memory") I have set the reminst share to read share permission for everyone, seemed to be a issue with WMI and the permissions when WinPE was trying to write logs back to the RIS box. But still same zx$x@u?xu-Xuzux... Any clues, I am out of em... ??? Thankz..

Lo.. I am not sure I understand u correctly but I will give it a go! Adding another administrator can be done with scripting to WSH (vbscripting) easily. Then u can just add the admin with an alternative name an make him a part of the sec group Administrators. Restricted groups membership, can be done by creating a template with the MMC Security Tempates snap-in and exporting it to a .inf file. Once u have done this, u can run secedit to apply this .inf file at installation time. Hope I got u right.. Keep truckin!

Nope, I havent tried that and I dont know y u would like to do that? Drive space is cheap so for my part I tend to think that it is a nice feature that XP will perform PnP for me when needed with its native driver support. For masstorage devices, the txtsetup.sif would be a nice file to start removing entries from if u wanna do a removal of the driver entries.. Best Regards ThaSausageEater

On a WinXP box: HKEY\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon AltDefaultDomainName AltDefaultUserName AltDefaultPassword or DefaultDomainName DefaultUserName DefaultPassword AutoAdminLogon AutoLogonCount I think these are the values that u are looking for.. combine them and u will see that it works like a charm... Check your ref.chm and deploy.chm for more info. ThaSausageEater

Oki, I will do that... i am pretty sure I did that in the first place but what the hell... thanks anyway Chris.. I will give it a go! Just seems wiered that it works in a virtual environment but on the HW it fails... Have a nice weekend dudes..

Lo pepz I am trying out the solution accelerator from MS, BDD 2.5 (Business Desktop Deployment) where u in the process end up with a WinPE2005 .iso built from a Win2003 SP1 source. Once I have this .iso, and now it starts to get wiered: The same .iso file. If I run it under a VPC session, it works (connects over the net, copies files down to local drive, and kicks of the installation). If I boot it from my RIS machine (onto another physical machine), it copies files down to the local drive, kicks of the WinXP setup, and approx 5 seconds later it ends with: "Out of memory" and then quits... Any ideas?? Best Regards

Oki... are u booting WinPE from a CD or from RIS? In case of RIS this usually means that the NIC drivers are not in place (or if I am not mistaken, there is a hotfix in regards to diffrent HAL's upon boot WinPE from a Win2000 RIS machine). In case of CD, dunno... do u have the same problem when in VPC or VMWare? Best Regards Tha Sausage Eater...

If u r installing a flat "image" (PnP installation), WinXP setup will place the correct kernel @ time of installation onto ur drive, if u r using a image based setup (IBS) u will have to take into account what HW u will be using it on as there will be diffrences in HAL's. A common fault when launching .cmd / .bat files is to leave out the /start command to the launch string. To make sure, run it from [GuiRunOnce] section as: < cmd /start your_own_batch_file.cmd > as u will have better control of batch files and when they are launched from this section. If u r familiar with vbscripting, I strongly recommend u to perform the same stuff using this tech instead as u will have much better control of executions / installations & (it looks better... Then again, the HAL support seems wiered, should not have anything to do with it according to me. Keep us posted what it turned out to be...

Maby this one: http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t28231.html havent tried it, but there seems to be information on how to push forward with XML on WinPE..

Nice one...

So did I and it works like a charm for me... but not a realtek driver, rather a SigmaTel audio driver. So maby it is not the same @ all..

Check the ref.chm and deploy.chm files on ur CD under the [Components] section and check if they r in there. Remember, for each new version of the OS that u r trying to install onto, MS releases new .chm documents (as for SP2 to WinXP and so on). Also, there are web sites which reference undocumented components to install which MS left out.... best of luck to u..

Hmm.. the full functionality of RIS is off limits if u dont have Active Directory. However, the PXE functionality of RIS can still be implemented without a Active Directory. This would not intergrate the installations to the LDAP service, but u would still be able to boot clients of the PXE service. this is from memory so correct me if I am off track: 1. Just get hold of the instsrv.exe (support tool i think for adding a service) 2. Place the tcpsvcs.exe in c:\windows\system32 3. Supply the correct parameters for adding tcpsvcs.exe as the service target .exe file and name the service as a normal RIS installation would name the the service (BINLSVC/Remote Installation) 4. I think u r ready to go..... maby this could be something for u? if not, there is alot of 3 party PXE sevices as well that would do the trick for u without using RIS. Even think Intel has some free PXE tool... Good luck to you...

Lo dude.. @ my place we are using RIS as well to deploy installations to servers & clients. to be able to automate the installation for naming purposes of the computers, we need to save a variable with the information from the custom .osc file @ boot time to the installation sequence. This is very much alike what u want do if i understand u correctly, u just wanna have the description entered @ the .osc and then populated to the comp object once the installation is done... or? in that case maby our solution would work for ya. RIS creates a temp object for the installation of the client, the .osc file will then place the value of the screen (.osc) by means of a .vbs script, into an empty "trash" attribute of the temp object. Once u r in Win32 mode, another .vbs is executed from the [GuiRunOnce] section that will find the object in Active Directory (and read) the trash attribute. This way the value will be known and can be copied / deleted & modified any way u want to another attribute (description) for example. hope this gives u a possible way to go forward. good luck and stuff.. over & out from the sasusage eater!