Ahmed-26

Hello all, Good Day, I have recently purshased a new Dell PowerEdge 750 server and i want to install windows 2003 server remotely to this server using Microsoft RIS. I made another server for this purpose , making this server as a domain controller (a requirement for RIS) , installed DHCP and TFTPD server to prepare the new server for PXE boot and download the boot file image. Please refer to the following steps i did in my test environment in details : 1) I prepared a master server to hold RIS , DHCP and TFTPD and this server is Dell Dimension series. 2) I ran "risetup" to create a flat base image of windows 2003 server and it performed successfully. 3) After that , i setup the DHCP scope options 043,060,066,067 for PXE booting and in the option 067 i typed the "startrom.n12" as the boot file image. 4) I setup my TFTPD server to look at the path : "Reminst\Setup\Setup\English\Images\WINDOWS\i386\templates". 5) I started my new Dell PowerEdge 750 server to perform a PXE Rom boot and i saw a client installation wizard screen. Good!! sounds great till now and this means that i am walking through the deployment process successfully. But!!!!! After i logged in to the domain using the administrator credentials in the CIW , i didn't see any images at all and it says that " may be either i don't have a network permissions or there are no images in the RIS server" in the OS Choices screen. I troubleshooted the problem by the following : 1) I looked in the Group Policy for RIS options and i enabled all the deployment options. 2) I checked the permissions on the image, so to make it easy enough , i gave "Everyone" and "Administrator" a full control permissions. 3) i aslo gave the same ACL permissions on the Images folder. I really didn't know what to do , i searched all the forums on earth about this problem and finally i found out that the new Dell PowerEdge server got a different hardware abstraction layer (HAL) other than the Master Dell Dimension server . So, the question is ... How to have an image with different HALs for deploying windows to different machines?! . Some people say that its wise to have all your hardwares in servers to be identical and other people say that to use Sysprep. I don't want to have all my servers identical because every customer need his/her own harware specifications in servers. In my case , i don't want to use Sysprep because i don't want to deploy an image from existing windows but i want to install windows from scratch to servers and workstations. Please i appreciate step by step guide to how customize a HAL for different machine deployment or having a centralized image got different HALs for targeted machines. Thanks a lot. Regards, Ahmed

Here is an update for the previous information : I did create two additional windows xp pro images in RIS and i removed the ERD image from RIS. i did that to test the windows installation and to see if these images will appear to me in the client installation wizard as OS choices or not. However, the problem still exists and the client can not find any OS images. I checked the permissions on the images and the administrator account have full control on them and i gave him a right to log on as a batch job (as i read in other forums). Please Helpppppp !! Thanks Ahmed

Hello There, Good Day, I have a problem with client installation wizard which is deployed to clients through RIS. It asked for a user name and password of the connected server and i simply typed in these credentials. However, it is unable to display operating system (OS) choices and it states that i may not have network permission to view the OS choices on the server or the server might not contain any OS image. Here are what i have done from scratch : 1) I installed DHCP and RIS in the same server. 2) I created a windows XP pro SP2 image in the RIS server. 3) I installed the ERD's i386 folder contents to the i386 folder of the RIS image and i clicked Yes to All. 4) I collected : ntdetect.com , startrom.n12 , Winnt.sif , ristndrd.sif and setupldr.exe which i renamed it later to NTLDR to a templates folder under the image installation. 5) I created 043,066,067,060 scope options in the DHCP and set the 067 option to include startrom.n12 as a string value. 6) I booted the client machines and they booted successfully to client installation wizard. But the error i wrote above appears anyways. My intention is to boot ERD commander not windows that's why i did copy the contents of ERD commander to overwrite the windows image since i dont want to boot windows via RIS. Please if i did something wrong in the previous steps or i need some fix so tell me and i want to know how to boot ERD commander through RIS anyways! . \ Thanks. Regards, Ahmed

Hey, Here is an update for what happened : I removed the RIS image from the server and i created a new image from windows 2000 server CD and i did all the steps that i discussed above. Guess What happened! I have now in the top of the screen statement "OSChooser V5.2" and i thought that was a progress for what i was doing but this screen stops for a while and a blue screen appeared and it stopped also forever. I invastigated the TFTP log file and i found that it tried to send OSChoose\i386\winnt.sif but it seems that the file need some additional parameters or something like that. Any ideas?!! Regards, Ahmed

Thanks guys for your support but i have more 2 questions related to this windows PE. Is windows PE just like BartPe? and in case if i don't want to install RIS , can i use BartPe or windows PE without RIS? Thanks

Hello There, Please i want to know what is the RAM Disk? All i know that you can boot from PXE network adapter and then it contacts the DHCP and TFTP servers for TCP/IP information and image boot file. Thanks Regards, Ahmed

Hello, You can setup and configure DHCP server in the W2k3 server that is connected to the ADSL router and add 003 scope option in the DHCP to be the ip address of the ADSL router. Configure your client machines TCP/IP properties to obtain ip addresses automatically. Also, in the TCP/IP properties of the W2k3 server in the default gateway field write the ip address of the ADSL router and its recommended to use a static ip address for the server not from DHCP range to avoid ip conflicts. But, about the DNS information in order to resolve internet names you have to write the ip addresses that the service provider gave you. Add an additional 006 scope option in DHCP and write the ISP DNS addresses. Configure your client machines to obtain DNS automatically. About file sharing , simply install "File and printer sharing for Microsoft Networks" which is by default installed and just share the folders by right-clicking . I have to ask you first , is this W2k3 server got two network cards? if so, then you will benefit from NATing for more security but the NAT is not the topic here i think and the topic is just to connect your clients to the internet and gain access to file sharing. I wish this can help your issue.

Hello There, Good Day, This is Ahmed Mounir from London. I've been working around with microsoft RIS and how to boot an ERD Commander cd image via PXE boot. I did setup the RIS server successfully and created a windows xp sp2 image then i copied \i386 folder from the ERD image to the \i386 folder of the RIS image. In addition,i created a templates folder under the newly copied \i386 folder and i added these files in it : startrom.com , ntdetect.com , ristndrd.sif , winnt.sif and setupldr.exe which later i renamed it to ntldr and these files was took from a folder called OSChooser. so my folders structure for RIS deployment looks like this : \\RemoteInstall\Setup\English\Images\ERD\i386\temp lates My dhcp server is the same as RIS server so i had to add an 060 scope option with pxeclient value string in addition to 066,067 and 043 options. However,when i turned on one of my client machines it booted successfully from the network and received an ip address. it also detected my tftp server for downloading the image and i saw a statement states " Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration" and suddenly its stopped for a while then a Ntdetect failed message appeared. I checked the tftp log file results and i found "Timeout error sending ntdetect.com , 0 bytes". i felt that ntdetect.com file is corrupted. Anyways, i found another one in windows xp cd and i copied and pasted it in the tftp root directory but the problem still persist. Please i am requesting help in this issue as well as any new ideas. A friendly tip : you can use startrom.n12 instead of startrom.com to avoid F12 prompting. Thanks Regards, Ahmed