midiboy

HI Bashrat, thanks .... ! As for the drivers ... there is a better solution maybe ... Ali/Uli has integrated drivers on their website that supports every Ali/Uli chipset: Latest drivers The addon JMIcron SATA2 JMB360 chip drivers can still be downloaded from the Asrock website: JMIcron drivers The Audio/Lan part are probably already supported by your driverpacks ... I guess ... Thanks, Alex

Hi Rogue, just read your guide ... very nice ! Thanks ! I have not yet installed RIS in our company yet so I was just reading your guide in advance. I also have not read the Mastering windows 2003 book yet but I will soon I do have three small questions for you though, hope you don´t mind. 1. The new .sif file: Mhh, this sif file has to be linked to the installation in the RIS server if I am not mistaken, right ? Are you sure the location of this sif file does not matter ? 2. The Bootdisc/network cards problem: I am a bit confused. As far as I read, RIS needs either a PXE enabled NIC or this special bootdisc by Microsoft. The latter cannot be modified to support additional NIC´s. Logic tells me that network card support would have to be in that bootdisc and not in the i386 directory of the installation image. So why would you be adding those Intel NIC drivers there ? Wouldn´t installation via RIS fail anyway because the bootdisc does not detect the NIC and therefore won´t be able to contact the RIS server ? Or do those NIC´s all support PXE ? Sorry, I am a bit lost there. This PXE requirement is THE ONE weak point in all of this wonderful RIS world I think. Most newer onboard NICs do not seem to support remote booting so one would have to install special NIC´s in all client machines ... If one could only use WindowsPE/BartPE or something similar to connect to RIS, that would be cool ! 3. Will this installation process of additional NIC´s also work for non Intel cards (copy sys and inf files to the i386 directory) ? Wouldn´t it be possible to use Bashrat´s LAN driverpack for this ? Thanks and bye Alex

Thanks, Bashrat ! Bye,Alex

Hi Bashrat, Thanks for the update. I get a file is not on server error message though. Maybe to early yet ? Bye, Alex

HI Bashrat, how about supporting this new killer chipset ? Review see here. As for drivers (AGP, Audio, Lan, Sata RAID and Sata 2 [different controllers] see this website. Bye, Alex

hehe ... ups Sorry, I am getting old ... Bye, Alex

HI BAshrat, maybe you can explain why I am having a new SCSI and Raid controller in my system since using your latest DP versions ... never had that one before ... Do the driverpacks come with new virtual hardware now ? :-)) I know my system (Asus P4P800 Deluxe), it does not have any D347PRT SCSI Controller, yet it is being installed (see pic). I know this never happened with earlier versions .... I just checked on another system (Asus A7N8X with NVidia chipset). It also has that new hardware inside suddenly ... cool ! New hardware with your driverpack. Can I have a new processor too please ? Bye, Alex

yeah, just wanted to say the same thing . Can you tell me when we could expect that update ? I just had to install a friends Nvidia PC and it took me quite a while to figure out why the control panel didn´t install Still, even with those errors that occur from time to time, still great work and thanks ! Bye, Alex

Ok, Martin, here are the things I would need. Thanks for asking for my input. The ideal solution for me would be something like RIS but more flexible in those areas: 1. it should be working with or without a domain 2. it should be working for a networked installation or an installation from an internal hd or DVD drive (just my personal wish so I can use one solution for home and office use) 3. it should be more flexible in the boot options, meaning, no need for PXE NIC´s, a bootdisc that can be modified to support the latest NIC´s using standard drivers (like BartPE etc.) Then I would need the following: .) a Menu in the bootdisc to choose installation (different windows versions etc. ideally some could be local, some on a network) .) the possibility to change winnt.sif/unattend.txt on the fly to support changing the Windows product key, computername, organisation name, administrator name, password, adding the machine to a domain if there is one, or a workgroup. There should be a menu where the user can input those things before installation actually starts. If possible it would be nice to do that for a local installation from DVD also (possibly by using a temp drive or ramdrive for the changed winnt.sif ?) If all that is too much (which I guess it is) then for me, personally (don´t know about others) it would be nice if this tool could fill the gap between the normal unattended installation from a local DVD drive and the RIS installation in a domain, meaning it should allow the same things RIS does but without the need for PXE on the client side. At least this is my personal "wishlist". I don´t know if you wanted to hear something like that or something completely differnt Thanks in advance for any work you are doing !! Bye, Alex

Well, if you use Perfect disc, an icon appears and tells you what PD is doing if you move the mouse over it. Also PD defrags all drives at once. If you use Windows defrag, nothing appears, however, the script calls the cmd version of defrag which means you get a status on each drive formatted in a cmd. This of course only happens if you run the script as the same user that is logged in. I have scheduled it using the SYSTEM account and then I don´t get any visual feedback. By the way, I think I have found the problem with the combined script I posted above. Somehow wscript did not like the word "RETURN" in line 23 saying it was not defined. It did work in the script by Doug though. Strange. dropping that and just using ws.run seems to work: ' - Defrag all hard disks - Option Explicit Dim ws, fs, progfiles, raxco Set ws = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") progfiles = ws.ExpandEnvironmentStrings ("%PROGRAMFILES%") raxco = progfiles & "\Raxco\PerfectDisk" '** Subroutine; PerfectDisk Sub PerfectDisk If fs.FileExists(raxco & "\PDcmd.exe") Then ws.Run("""%PROGRAMFILES%\Raxco\PerfectDisk\PDcmd.exe"" /SmartPlacement /WAIT /AllDrives"),0,True End Sub '** Subroutine; Windows Defrag Sub WindowsDefrag Dim d, dc Set dc = fs.Drives For Each d in dc If d.DriveType = 2 Then ws.Run("Defrag " & d & " -F"),1,true End If Next End Sub '** Run Tasks If fs.FolderExists(raxco) Then PerfectDisk Else WindowsDefrag End If WScript.quit

Hey guys, wow, some vbs experts out there ... :-) I have combined rogue´s and Doug Knox´s defrag.all scripts but I am having a bit of a problem with it: ' - Defrag all hard disks - Option Explicit Dim ws, fs, progfiles, raxco Set ws = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") progfiles = ws.ExpandEnvironmentStrings ("%PROGRAMFILES%") raxco = progfiles & "\Raxco\PerfectDisk" '** Subroutine; PerfectDisk Sub PerfectDisk If fs.FileExists(raxco & "\PDcmd.exe") Then ws.Run("""%PROGRAMFILES%\Raxco\PerfectDisk\PDcmd.exe"" /SmartPlacement /WAIT /AllDrives"),0,True End Sub '** Subroutine; Windows Defrag Sub WindowsDefrag Dim d, dc Set dc = fs.Drives For Each d in dc If d.DriveType = 2 Then Return = ws.Run("defrag " & d & " -f", 1, TRUE) End If Next End Sub '** Run Tasks If fs.FolderExists(raxco) Then PerfectDisk Else WindowsDefrag End If WScript.quit The things is that if I call this script as an scheduled task, the task wscipt.exe will not end afterwards (don´t have perfect disc installed at the moment). If I call the original vbs script by Doug it will: 'defrag_all.vbs - Defrags all hard disks - Can be run as a Scheduled Task '© Doug Knox - 3/29/2002 Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Dim fso, d, dc Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set dc = fso.Drives For Each d in dc If d.DriveType = 2 Then Return = WshShell.Run("defrag " & d & " -f", 1, TRUE) End If Next Set WshShell = Nothing Any idea why ? Also I am not sure that all drives in fact get defragmented in the first script by windows defrag (the first script ends much sooner as the second, although I did not change much ... mhh, what could that be ?!? ) Thanks for pointing out any errors, I am not very good at scripting :-) Bye, Alex

cool ... let us know when you are ready ! THANKS ! Alex

Martin Zugec, chilifrei64 and kti^: Thanks for your answer to my questions ! As for the software deployment thing I have not found a solution yet. SMS, Unicenter, Tivoli or Altiris seem all to be overkill for our needs (we only have <8 PC´s in our domain currently). Deploying using GP is not reliable enough and is too limited. Is there a simple freeware/shareware solution available that can deploy software to all computers in a OU. I already have batchfiles that installs silently from my unattended DVD project, I just wish I would be able to deploy them easily and reliably without much effort. Specops deploy looks better but maybe there are other options yet ? Thanks, Alex

Hi guys! Please excuse me chiming in here, I would like to add two questions regarding RIS. 1. As far as I know (or have been able to find out) RIS only works with either PXE enabled NICs or a special small bootup tool from MS but that ones does not support a lot of NICs. Is there an alternative (WindowsPE, BartPE) that could be used to connect to a RIS server ? If yes, how would you do that ? 2. Can RIS be used to deploy software to domain clients after initial setup ? I mean installing software on already existing machines, not reinstalling from scratch. I know you can use GroupPolicy for that but that method is limited to msi installers as far as I know. Any alternative available ? Thanks a lot for your help guys ! Alex

Hi un4given1 ! I have read your and the other guide on bink.nu with great interest and understand now how RIS works (theoretically ). However, I still don´t fully understand the client side of things. How would I be able to create a boot disk/floppy with an PXE boot client that will work with every available NIC (not only 3Com and some Intel cards). Some NIC´s don´t seem to support booting from a network, at least most of the newer onboard NIC´s don´t. Any ideas on that ? Also I would be very interested in that additional guide you have at home :-) If you don´t mind sharing it ... Thanks, Alex

Hi again, in the meantime I have managed to come up with 2 good guides here. Haven´t tried them out yet but at least theoretically I understand the concept now. However, those guides mostly talk about the server side of things. What I still don´t know yet is how to create a boot disk/floppy with an PXE boot client that will work with every available NIC (not only 3Com and some Intel cards). Some NIC´s don´t seem to support booting from a network, at least most of the newer onboard NIC´s don´t. Any ideas for that maybe ? Thanks ! Alex

Hi everyone ! I am not new to unattended installations but I until now I have only created a DVD based installation for myself. I am now supposed to create something similar at work for all our office computers but I am a bit lost ... I already gathered that RIS and Windows PE could be the things I need, after all we have access to all the Microsoft stuff and work in a MS domain. I have just read a bit through the whitepapers on the MS WinXP SP2 OPK but somehow I am not getting anywhere. There is much talk about sysprep, preparing images for deployment etc. but thats not what I want. I was thinking about installing Windows and successive installations the same way I did before, just over the network. Would this work at all or would it be too slow (100Mbit network) to be usable ? Can anyone recommend a good beginners guide to RIS and Windows PE (I guess I need the latter to start the PC´s locally before kicking of the remote installation) ? I already tried the search but didn´t come up with a lot of "beginners stuff" Thanks for your help ! Alex

ah I see ... you were hiding that feature Thanks !! Bye, Alex

Hi Bashrat, say ... would it be possible for you (if not too much work) to create an uninstaller script for all driverpacks ? I mean, you already delete older versions when integrating new ones so I guess you already have everything you need for that. I am just asking because I sometimes would like to make a UACD without any DP`s included and it would be great if I would´t have to keep seperate install folders. Besides, my installation folder already has all the DP´s integrated so I would have to start from scratch anyway. Most of the DP´s can be removed easily by deleting the "D" folder but the base and masstore packs would be more difficult I guess ... Thanks !! Bye, Alex PS: Maybe you could add this script to your base DP by default ?

Hey Martin, I would also be very interested in your solution ! Thanks for sharing it !! Bye, Alex

Hi ! @Bashrat & Siginet: Thanks for the fix !! Bye Alex

EDIT: removed this post because of stupidity of the writer Thanks for the new version ! EDIT2: After all I did find a small error. Using Method 1, Runonceex, after choosing the runonceex execution number I got an error message saying that cmdlines_fix.exe was not found. I then had to manually add the BTS_DPs_ROE.cmd to cmdlines.txt. cmdlines_fix.exe was copied to the $OEM$ directory by the way and was left there after the integration process finished. Bye, Alex

HI Bashrat, I think you "forgot" the new Intel drivers: Matrix Storage Manager 5.0.0.1032 Bye Alex

HI Bashrat, thanks a lot for the new version. Works great ! Just something you seemed to have forgotten in the new masstore pack: the new Intel Matrix storage manager has been out for a while. I will post a link in the relevant thread. Thanks ! Alex

I would like to know that too. With NVIDIA drivers all you have to do is exchange the files but ATI drivers require some more work so maybe Bashrat could share the process with us Also, since I don´t have a Radeon card in my PC can anyone tell me if the integrated CAT´s contain the new Catalyst Control Center (requiring Net Framework) or the older control panel ? Maybe it could be arranged to offer both and ask for which to integrate into the CD during the slipstreaming process ? If that does not require major changes/work ? Thanks, Alex