brainstane

I had to use my partner credentials to download. Thanks for the link and info tho.

Would it be legal, then, to rebuild the OEM machine using the VLK key which is installed on the computer by the manufacturer? Lets say you want to put XP pro back on the box, using Unattended and RIS to your companies specs...is it legal to use the OEM key, or must the one thats supplied on the side of each box be used when rebuilding each machine?

I've accidentally been able to get Runonceex entries to run twice (once before and once again after a reboot), but only after the system had "hung" when an ATI setup program had caused the system to freeze with two remaining RUnOnceEx entries. Upon reboot, the remaining RunOnceEx entries are executed. I ran across this by accident while testing IBM hardware server builds (and their drivers) on an HP workstation. This workstation did not contain any ATI hardware and froze when the driver installation program executed. Using the above scenario, my question is this: 1) What if you write a program to "hang" the system at a few steps before the final runonceex command is executed. 2) At the end of the first runceonexec command, a prgram is written which creates a 30 second "system freeze" before finally executing a shutdown -r command. If this doesnt work, (Ive only done reboots on these frozen machines by powering them down) we could perhaps get fancier and do the following: 4) the system "freeze" program is made to send a "hello" call to a waiting program on the RIS server. This program will then execute a "wake on lan" commandl to the IP adress which had sent the "hello" My wonder is if you could get a consecutive series of applications or AutoIt commands to daisy chain one after the other, reboot after reboot. This scenario would be ideal for scripting the configuration of active directory in windows 2003, (which requires a reboot to apply) before group policy settings and user accounts can be configured. For example, I've written AutoIt scripts which configure a 2003 domain controller to my companys specs; but all 6 scripts must be executed manually to configure the server. This would be an ideal process to automate.

Rogue, Have you ever run across a way to force RIS into going into the disk partitioning mode when it detects more than one partition? I sometimes deploy machines that come with a "hidden" recovery partition on the HD which must be wacked via DISKPART before RIS works reliably. If I leave this partition on the HD, when RIS runs it will occasionally skip the C:\ partition and create an E:\ partition after the recovery partition and attempt to install there. When this happens the installation will bomb out with the message "this machine does not have sufficient space to load the image you have selected"..any ideas on how to get around this from within RIS and without having to resort to a manual DISKPART prior to RIS? thanks and any help is once again appreciated. Hope these off-topic posts of mine are not construed as "threadcrapping"..I just havent been able to find a decent forum that deals with RIS stuff and am very interested in mastering this process.

Hi Bashrat, For some reason when I do a method 1 install there is no OEMPNPDRIVERPATH being inserted into my winnt.sif file. The only thing thats showing up in the file is this: [Data] MsDosInitiated = "No" [Unattended] NonDriverSigningPolicy = "Ignore" DriverSigningPolicy = "Ignore" OemPreinstall = "Yes" [GUIRunOnce] command9 = "%SystemDrive%\D\BTS_DPs_finish.cmd" Im using base 581, and all other steps in the driver setup procedure are going as expected. All the drivers are showing up in the $1 folder, Im just not getting the driver path in winnt.sif. Can you think of anything that could be causing this? Thanks a bunch!

Rogue, (and everybody) Im not sure if you're familiar with this or not, but I just learned that the Net Use command can also be employed during the RIS installation. Doing this gives you an alternate way of running applications from a network share after the sysprep portion of your installation has completed. Credit for this idea goes to the following microsoft article: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechn...t/superris.mspx The gist of it is this: You add the following to [GUIRUNONCE] [GuiRunOnce] "net use n: \\<server>\<share> password /USER:username /persistent:no" "n:\sp1\update.exe" utilizing the Net Use command during the RIS install also lets you kick off a custom batch .cmd file (to do XCOPY commands and such) or whatever other batch file techniques you would like. I havent utilized this yet in RIS..but its something I do alot when building servers unattended and copying the I386 folder to the HD before the server is built. It's a big time saver if you routinely have to copy a large amount of data to the HD in a predictable manner in each build.

Try adding drivers other than your chipset to your $OEM$\drivers path to see if anything is getting installed. If, for example, you can get your NIC drivers to install, but not your chipset, it will show you that your technique is correct but that you do not have the correct drivers in your folder. Hope this helps.

kanesama I have the Via K8t800 chipset at home and have been unable to boot it via RIS so far myself as well. Most of my efforts have been focused on the Intel pro100 and broadcom drivers so far tho, and I've only given a passing attempt at booting the Via board. I would have to concur with rougespear on this issue tho about via..they seem to be more trouble than they're worth and this board will be turned into a cheap server shortly to bel be replaced with something more RIS friendly. As for the SATA drivers, you can definitely pick them up at the Via site. Rogue, Im currently in progress on your guide. I'm going to attempt to use the SVCPACK method for the hotfixes, by including the entry SCVPACK in the DOSNET.INF file under [OptionalSrcDirs] value.I am currently utilizing that technique for my unattended installations and would like to be able to update both unattended and RIS using a common source location. One other question..are you familiar with customizing the .OSC screens and the values that can be inserted into these menu screens? I've googled but can only find mention that they can be customized but haven't really found any examples for doing this. If you have any links in regards to doing this stuff I would be HUGELY appreciative. Edit: (I wacked a huge chunk of post due to some dumb questions on my part which were the result of a mistake) Ran through your guide and everything went perfect. By adding SVCPACK as described above my entire catalog of current hotfixes was installed, along with the driver packs which were installed per your guide. Thanks for the info!

As somebody who dove headlong into RIS about 3 months ago and is just now coming up for air, I would also like to say thank you for this guide. I cant wait to try and integrate the driver packs into my RIS install. Hopefully that will once and for all do away with the dreaded "the image you selected does not contain the necessary network drivers" message. The tip about the intel pro100 driver is spot on and is going to be the first stumbling block for people who are stuck with legacy or new equipment sporting the pro100 chipset. Fiixing that driver problem was my first major hurdle in the RIS process and was a great learning experience in fixing it. (the hard way of course) Another tip for the people who are just going into this (and one I learned the hard way) when you make a change to your RIS image, such as adding a NIC's INF file, make sure to search your entire image folder for a .PNF file that matches the name of your newly inserted INF file. Delete any matching .PNF files (or delete ALL .pnf files..windows will regenerate them) before restarting the Remote Installation service. One more tip that should keep you out of harms way is to make sure that you always name your folders sequentially in the Images folder, keeping them in the order in which they were created. Make sure the Flat file you copy in (the one rogue spear walks you through creating) is named 111 or AAA or something similar so it is always at the top of the list. As you add more workstation images name them 2, 3 ,4...whatever your namimg scheme. There's a service called "single instance storage groveler" running in the background that does funny things to your RIS Image folder if you put newer files at the top of the list than those that were previously there. I completely broke one of my RIS workstation images by placing a BartPE image above it in the "images" folder. Doing this caused windows to somehow overwrite needed files in my workstation image with "hacked" ones that were in the bart folder. (this is my guess at least..by correcting the folder order and putting bart at the bottom of the list the problem went away) This is a process I dont really understand yet so if i explained it completely wrong I apologize...just be careful the order you put stuff in that folder and you'll be ok Thanks again for the guide rogue spear and I cant wait to try the driverpack integration. Im also excited to see what kind of speed differences your techniques can make over what I'm getting right now. I'm currently able to RIS image a workstation in about 15 minutes...are you getting comparable or faster times than this??? Also, do you know of anyway to integrate hotfixes into the RIS image? (via SVCPACK or whatever)...that would be really cool if that would work.

Hi Bashrat and dreamtime I do unattended network installs using both your driver packs and my own by booting BartPE over RIS and kicking off the unattended install from there. The neat thing about doing it this way is that you can script your disk formatting via batch files and DISKPART and automatically kick of the intstallation after the disk prep has been performed. Pretty much everything I'm doing has been copied from the following thread with a few customizations. http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=13271 If you have any questions after taking a look at this (or please disregard this if it isnt what you're looking for) let me know and I'll post my NU2Menu entry along with associated folder structures and scripts. One thing I noticed from testing is that it is NOT necessary to pause the DISKPART commands using the method referenced in the above thread. When doing a scripted DISKPART, it seems to pause automatically until each command is finished..making such pause commands unncessary. Huge Props to the author regardless, its an amazingly versatile way to perform network installs. The one requisite, as mentioned..is that you must have a network share of some sort. I currently install off of both a network shared USB drive and a dedicated network shard folder. I also use this method to preload workstation images onto a server2003 HD prep. By using the above method I am able to copy all windows 2003 installation files along with everything else I need from a network share. In my case this amounts to our customers databases along with the RIS images we use to restore workstations at our clients sites. Once you have the hard drive prepped the way you like it..simply pop it into the target server, hit the power button and come back an hour later to an almost fully configured windows 2003 server. P.S Just wanted to say thanks bashrat for all your work with these driver packs. Finding them is what prompted me to learn RIS, booting BartPE over RIS and unattended installations in general. This is a fantastic site and has let me leverage my knowledge into an entirely new position at my work and has entirely changed the way we build workstations and servers.