Jopster

I can give you that answer. There's a bug in Windows setup that prevents WinRE from being installed before the specialize phase of setup. Only way you can get it to work is by running it after that phase (specialize, audituser for instance) through a batch file. I have it working like this. I created 2 partitions, first one for my recovery purposes and assigned drive letter z: to it, but made it partition 1. Second one for my OS, made it partition 2 and assigned drive letter c: to it. Install your OS on the OS partition, afterwards run a batch file with "imagex /apply <path of your WinRE image> 1 z:" and it should deploy nicely. Only thing you have to do next is to run the setautofailover.cmd /target z: and you're all done. The drive letter will disappear because it's made hidden and you should boot nicely into the recovery console.

Not too many people with the problem apparently. Anyway, just got confirmation from Asus as well. They supplied me with a beta BIOS with the latest PXE update for one of their boards. Problem fixed. I've sent a list of "problem boards" to them and they will update the BIOS in the coming weeks.

A small update: I can confirm it's again related to the PXE version of the nVidia nic. MSI just supplied me with a BIOS update with the latest PXE ROM (232.0529) integrated and it worked in combination with the nVidia RIS drivers (version 4.7.1) I always have been using. Last year, a PXE update also solved these problems. I think once in a while they make a change in the chipset which makes PXE booting with RIS incompatible. I've send a request to my contacts at both MSI and Asus to implement this latest PXE update in their nVidia boards. I've already got confirmation from MSI and I'm waiting for confirmation from Asus. If your PXE version is lower than version 229.xxxx, it's my experience that it won't work and you'll have to ask your motherboard manufacturer to implement a new PXE version in the BIOS. So to summon it up: the problem I'm having is a blinking cursor in the left top of my screen after selecting the OS through RIS. The OS is loaded, but after the progress bar I'll get the blinking cursor. Sometimes I've seen the issue that it locks during the progress bar state. The RIS driver 4.7.1 works. You'll need to copy the .inf and .sys file to the I386 directory. In addition, you'll need to copy the .sys file to your i386\system32 directory, otherwise it'll give an error during installation.

True. A bit of a misunderstanding from my side I think. I thought he meant a central network driver source for the loading of the configuration set/image which does look for the drivers in the I386 directory. I must be getting old or need a vacation.

As far as I know, it's not possible. RIS looks for the drivers in the I386 directory of the image that is being loaded at that time. It would be handy though. Saves a lot of time if you have many different nic drivers. I have to manually add new drivers to 22 images. Hell of a job, but I'm used to it now I guess.

It depends on what kind of nic you have. Only a few have these options. I don't know about yours. But do you even have a PXE ROM on your nic? Can you turn it on seperately in your BIOS (Boot from LAN / Enable nic (option ROM)? Do you see a nic boot screen during startup or nothing at all. If the answer to the above is "no", there's a good possibility your onboard nic doesn't support PXE and you will have to use a seperate nic to PXE boot the system.

Couple of things you could try. - You could look in the BIOS if there's an option to turn on the boot rom for the nic. - Do you ever get to see the NIC boot screen? I've seen cases in which you have to change the setting of the nic to "PXE" in the nic's BIOS. You could check if there's a hotkey available to enter the nic's BIOS. - Try a BIOS update. - Only set the nic as boot device and disable the rest and see what that does. - You could always try a seperate nic in case all of the above doesn't work.

Sure you can do that. The end-user needs to accept it. If he's present he can accept it. Another way is to install the OS for the customer and run Sysprep at the end of the installation. The only disadvantage (from memory) is that the user account you created during the installation will remain, so the customer gets 2 user accounts after creating one himself. Perhaps there's a workaround for that, but I don't know it.

I used to have similar problems with WinPE over RIS. In my case the naming of the clients was causing the problem. They all had the same name when connected to the RIS server. I solved it by setting the name to be related to the MAC address instead of a user name. You must change this for the RIS server. It's a setting in AD. I'm able to run as many installations as I want now. Hope this helps.

A bit late, but I've got some comments about this issue. The problem has been known for quite some time now. Last year, I talked with both Microsoft and motherboard manufacturers about this issue. The problem back then was related to the PXE ROM version of the nVidia nic. I asked several manufacturers (I'm a system builder) to implement the new PXE version in their BIOSses. They did and the problem was solved. Now, the problem has come back and I've contacted them again. From my testing, PXE ROM version 215.0503 doesn't work at all anymore. I've had (limited) success with version 220.xxxx and higher. Right now, I'm waiting for Asus and MSI to provide me with a beta BIOS with the latest PXE ROM included. I don't believe it's driver related. I hope I'm wrong though, but experience has tought me that this is purely PXE ROM related. I'll keep you updated.

Just change the names in your "Images" directory. For example: if you have multiple Windows installations, name them AWindows, BWindows, CWindows, etc...

"Drivers\X200\Chipset;Drivers\X200\modem;Drivers\X200\video;Drivers\X200\audio;Drivers\D400\NIC;Drivers\D400\PCMCIA;Drivers\D400\Video;Drivers\D400\Audio;Drivers\D400\Modem;Drivers\D410\system;Drivers\D410\texas;Drivers\D410\Chipset;Drivers\D410\video;Drivers\D410\audio" Try it without the "". They don't belong there. So OemPnpDriversPath=drivers\blabla Furthermore, watch the spelling. It's OemPnpDriversPath, not OemPnpDriverPath

Try /quiet /norestart. That will work. Just be sure you install the package with .Net installed otherwise it'll fail.

Both Intel and Broadcom need special RIS drivers. The Intel ones you can find on the Intel site. You can find more info on this subject on: Link And if you haven't tried yet: try to reboot the binlsvc service in order to make the clients look for new/updated drivers.

Read the following post about this issue. Click