Krokodox

Ahhh, SDI image! I have not messed around with those since I gave up on MS ADS (Automatic System Deployment) for being crude, unintuitive, uninformative, unmanagable, uncooperative and slooooow. I never found the SDI to be of any good, perhaps someone could tell me what the advantage of using an SDI imag would be? BTW, MS designed ADS to be installed on W2K3 EE *only*, but I can tell you all that tinkering with the .MSI file makes it installable on anything from XP to W2K3 Web ;-) And it runs just fine, so this barrier is more of an administrative nature than of a technical nature

Yes. Using PXE, DHCP, TFTP, Windows service, directory structure, .ISO file, BartPE, RAMDisk and slipstreaming drivers are usual tasks i perform with RIS under W2K3 Please post your XPE PXE instructions. OK, here it comes, it has made wonders for my LAN setup. Beware though that I will not be able to answer any support questions! How to install a TFTP server on W2K3 NOTE! You need to have W2K3 with SP1, both for hosting TFTPD / DHCP as well as for building the BartPE .ISO image! TFTP service: 1. Expand TFTPD.EX_ (server part) och TFTP.EX_ (client part) from the CD-ROM's i386 directory to the %SystemRoot%\system32\ directory 2. Run INSTSRV TFTPD c:\windows\system32\tftpd.exe to install TFTPD.EXE as a service on the computer that will host the TFTP services 3. Create the file TFTPD.REG and edit it to contain the following registry. Import it once you are done. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TFTPD] @="" "DependOnService"=hex(7) : 74,00,63,00,70,00,69,00,70,00,00,00,61,00,66,00,64,00,\ 00,00,00,00 "DependOnGroup"=hex(7) : 00,00 "Type"=dword:00000010 "Start"=dword:00000002 "ErrorControl"=dword:00000001 "ImagePath"=hex(2) : 63,00,3a,00,5c,00,77,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,6f,00,77,00,73,00,\ 5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,74,00,66,00,74,\ 00,70,00,64,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,00,00 "DisplayName"="TFTP Server" "ObjectName"="LocalSystem" "Description"="Trivial File Transfer Protocol Server" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TFTPD\Enum] "0"="Root\\LEGACY_TFTPD\\0000" "Count"=dword:00000001 "NextInstance"=dword:00000001 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TFTPD\Parameters] "Clients"="*.*.*.*" "Masters"="" "Readable"="*" "Writeable"="" "Directory"="d:\\tftpdroot" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TFTPD\Security] "Security" = hex : 01,00,14,80,b8,00,00,00,c4,00,00,00,14,00,00,00,30,00,00,00,02,\ 00,1c,00,01,00,00,00,02,80,14,00,ff,01,0f,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,\ 00,00,02,00,88,00,06,00,00,00,00,00,14,00,fd,01,02,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,\ 05,12,00,00,00,00,00,18,00,ff,01,0f,00,01,02,00,00,00,00,00,05,20,00,00,00,\ 20,02,00,00,00,00,14,00,8d,01,02,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,04,00,00,00,00,\ 00,14,00,8d,01,02,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,06,00,00,00,00,00,14,00,00,01,\ 00,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,0b,00,00,00,00,00,18,00,ff,01,0f,00,01,02,00,\ 00,00,00,00,05,20,00,00,00,25,02,00,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,12,00,00,00,\ 01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,12,00,00,00 4. Create the directory D:\TFTPDRoot (as per the line stating "Directory"="d:\\tftpdroot" in the .REG file above!) 5. Copy NTDETECT.COM from the CD-ROM's i386 directory to the newly created D:\TFTPDRoot directory. 6. Expand SETUPLDR.EX_ from the CD-ROM's i386 directory to file D:\TFTPDRoot\NTLDR (NOTE! The file must be renamed to NTLDR WITHOUT any extension!). Expand STARTROM.CO_ from the CD-ROM's i386 directory to file D:\TFTPDRoot\startrom.com. Expand STARTROM.N1_ from the CD-ROM's i386 directory to file D:\TFTPDRoot\startrom.n12 7: Create the file WINNT.SIF in the D:\TFTPDRoot directory and edit it to contain the following: [SetupData] BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)" BootPath = "\i386\System32\" OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect /minint /rdexportascd /rdpath=pebuilder.iso" 8. Now open a CMD command prompt and start the TFTP service: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32>NET START TFTPD 9. Test the TFTP service with the help from the client application, if all goes well then the file WINNT.SIF should be retreived to the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 folder when you execute the following command: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32>TFTP -i localhost get winnt.sif PEBuilder: 1. Create an .ISO file with PEBuilder 3.1.4 (or newer) containing the RAMDisk component! 2. Copy the imagefile BartPE.ISO to D:\TFTPDRoot\pebuilder.iso (as per the "/rdpath=pebuilder.iso" in the .SIF file above!) DHCP service configuration: 1. The DHCP service must be installed and configures and have an active scope up and running 2. Configurera the DHCP service with the following Server Options: 043 Vendor Specific Info: 01 04 00 00 00 00 FF 066 Boot Server Host Name: srvname (substitute "srvname" with whatever your server is named;-) 067 Boot File Name: startrom.com (or startrom.n12 if you do not want to press F12 on the client upon PXE boot) 3. Open a CMD command prompt and create Server Option 060 in the DHCP service with help from the NETSH command: C:\WINDOWS\system32>netsh netsh>dhcp netsh dhcp>server \\<server name> (or IP addres!) netsh dhcp server>add optiondef 60 PXEClient String 0 comment=PXE support netsh dhcp server>set optionvalue 60 STRING PXEClient netsh dhcp server>exit 4. Restart the DHCP service in order to force it to reload the new settings: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32>NET STOP DHCPSERVER C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32>NET START DHCPSERVER 5. Now you should be able to PXE Boot BartPE from an PXE enabled client computer attached to the same LAN as the TFTPD server! NOTE! Every time a DHCP Server Option is changed you need to restart the DHCP service in order to force it to use the new settings! A *much better* alternative TFTP service from Microsoft(!): 1. Download the PXE/TFTP service that belongs to Windows XP Embedded from Microsoft's site. Unfortunately it is stated that one should not give out the exact URL, so I will not give it out here, but search for the name of the .MSI file ("Windows XP Embedded Remote Boot Server.msi") and it might pop up somewhere ;-) 2. Run the setup and let it install all services into their preferred installation directories. 3. When the setup finishes, copy the files NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and WINNT.SIF that you create as per step 5 in the setup of the TFTP service above and replace the ones created by the setup program in the C:\PROGRAM FILES\WINDOWS EMBEDDED\REMOTE BOOT SERVICE\DOWNLOADS directory. This directory is the equivalent for the D:\TFTPDRoot directory described in step 4 in the setup of the TFTP service above. 4. Remove Server Option 043, 066 och 067 (leaving Server Option 060!) in case they exist on the DHCP server. 5. The setting for BOOT IMAGE and BOOT PARAMETERS in the TFTP GUI are not used since we replaced the NTDETECT.COM / NTLDR to newer ones not made for these XP Embedded specific settings! The advantage of this PXE / TFTPD service is that you can specify PXE actions per MAC-address, i.e. whether to force just a specific server to boot into PXE upon next reboot. The "standard" TFTPD server is not this flexible since all rebooting PXE clients will be handled the same way. Also, there is no need to restart the DHCP service when you change a boot setting for a specific server since this is handled automagically by this much improved (but not 110% slick) PXE / TFTPD service. And for all of us GUI friends, there is this cool GUI where you can line up all of your servers and manage them with a souple of mouseclicks ;-) Good luck and please do not forget where you saw this first!