Thona

Not yet. Mostly because the DHCP works fine: * I get an IP Address in Windows XP on that computer. * I get an IP Address once I get Vista installed for Vista. * I get a DHCP address from the boot rom, so WinPE starts. All that make network errors a litle unlikely, or? DHCP is working, or a lot of peopel would complain here - and all the dozen or so vista reinstalls I made the last days to check setup automation (from dvd, though) would ALSO not get an IP Address. I also have plenty of ip addresses in that scope that are unused.

Nice I am not alone. I do not think this can be it - i.e. lack of drivers. Two reasons for this: * It works with Vista installed. If I install from the dvd, it works. * It worked ONCE on my test system. ONCE. Could more be a faulty driver that just does work very rarely. It also does not say it has no network. I would expect a PXE boot image (i.e. one that will be run from th e network) to provide a better error message if no supported network is found - i.e. one saying "ok, dude, I simply have no network card here that I support, sorry". But nice that I am not alone with this issue :-)

Ok, I am stuck again. Nice, isn't it? I got Vista to install ONCE yesterday, ever since I am getting the same crappy error. I can start my computer, press f12, start the Nvidia boot agend (it is a Shuttle SN 25P with an NForce 4 chipset). The boot agend comes, finds a DHCP and TFTP, starts downloading windows. Windows PE starts - and stops with "WdsClient: An error occured while obtaining an IP Address from the DhcpServer". Reset time. The same DHCP Server successfully handles my computer (in XP, DVD installed Vista) as well as all the other workstations in the company. Heck, as I said - it also is good enough to get the whole thing up into WinPE. Anyone any idea what is going wrong here? I am having answer files prepared and am ready to start testing. But this is a bumper I have no way around.

I sort of hate to tell it, but yes, that works. It does not work under WIndows 2003, and not under XP - just under Vista for me. Thanks.

I have serious problems. I can not open a windows image (install.wim). It asks me to select one of the images there, then tells me the catalog file is out of date. Trying to rebuild it - it crashes at the end, leaving the catalog unfinished. Result: The whole System Image Manager is unusable. Anyone similar experiences? The actual crash is a COM interop exception. It happens at the end of the "Generating Catalog file". In/after the "cleaning up" step. HRESULT 0x800F080D It is a TargetInvocationException in the CpsSessionAdapter.OpenInstalledPackage method. I run this on a fresh installed virtual WIndows 2003 R2 with just the installer for BDD and WAIK run. Windowsupdate did run. It is there just for this reason. I already tried reinstalling. I have tried the wim/clg files from the cd image using daemon tools, as well as copying them locally - the catalogues are always outdated.

Ok, I am finally making progress. Got a new WDS install and things work. My main problem now is the answer file. Somehow I seem to be unable to get the answer file editor from WAIK to actually- well - work. It complaints about the catalog being outdated and crashes on rebuild.

I know, osoudns redundant, but I have problems getting through the documentation in a way that leads to a result. Too much information too distributed. I am planning a rollout for Windows Vista to a smaller development team. I want to use WDS because of the convenience of having the images on the network. Setup should be automated but stil lrequire manual entry of the license code, as developers get their own one to use. I ahve various machiens around that have various nic's, so capturing one bare image seems not to be a good solution. I managed to not get anything done the last days, so this is a fresh start. I am installing a new virtual sever at the moment with WDS - and am in the stage of installing the images in the configuration. My main questions: * The boot.wim seems not to have any network card drivers installed. How it the recommended approach to set them up? WAIK? So far so good, but where the heck do aI get a good collection of those? Vista itself seems to have ample. Example: I use a NForce 4 based computer. Booting from WDS gets me a no driver found for the nic, booting into a dvd installed vista - works. Any way to tap into this driver pool? Or is it like the RIS times (which just sucked) where I have to go out and try to get things forking (yeah, nforce 4) somehow. * Cutomzation, I assuem, should be done using the WAIK tool to create the unattended answer file?

The more I think about it, the easier it actually is. All I need to do is put a known funny file onto the cd - then I can check all drives for that file, and use some really simple stuff to set that into an environment variable. IIRC that is the approach Windows uses, too - having "marker files" on the CD's.

That would be great. I had to give up. I managed (!) to get the image installed.... that worked flawless. And VERY fast. I am now stuck with setting up a 2003 compatibel boot sector. That did not work out. Anyone a tip on that? My boot just went through to CD.

Hm. Ok. That is pretty much what I needed. What about automatically starting the batch file?

I try to use WinPE 2.0 to automatically install operating system images, using a batch script. Here is my question: How do I find out, which drive bis my cd drive? Thanks to various partitioning schemes, that may be D, E, F..... Is there an environment variable or other easy way to find that out?

I havea couple of servers that I need t oget into better shape. They have the capability to have their discs mirrored. So that that has been done using nvraid. Now, that has issues. We were never satisfied with nvraid - it has a tendency to disconnect the mirrors sometimes, the events it publishes are pretty bad for central administration. Driver maintenance for boot images is painfull. The question has been raised whether we would be better just ignoring nvraid and going with dynamic discs and the integrated mirror mechanism. Anyone any experience for that? The idea is to use that (i.e. the dynamic disc mirror) and then a boot dvd to actually boot into the mirror disc. That boot handling is my biggest problem, gigen that nvraid handels that transparently. Can anyone with experience comment on that? Is there a better way to handle the boot from a failed mirror by now, compared to using a bood disc/boot cd?

Surely. ANd I can live with the beta status. I tried peimg to inject the sataraid drivers. Crash on boot.

Very nice. That is the idea I have, too. I seems that all the tools are available, from bootsect to diskpart to imagex, to acutally do imaging. And frankly, I sort of like the way ImageX works. My main problem now is getting the **** winpe image to support my NForce 4 RAID drivers. No luck setting that up so far.

Anyone has an idea how to incorporate the Nvidia Nforce drivers for the NvRaid system into Windows PE 2.0? Step by step preferred, please :-) I just played around with WinPE 2.0, and network works fine - but I am unable to get access to the hard discs, which are mounted using nvraid mirroring.

And the whole partition/format/bootsector setup can be scripted then, from WinPE?

Is there any way to get the command line that Windows PE has exposed over COM2 / Emergency Management Port? I have a couple of Tyan B2865 chipsets with BMC here, and I would love to be able to have one Windows PE environment for repairs and the like. Now, I can control teh whole Bios etc. thing over remote console using the MDC3290 daugherboards, but - naturally - that stops when Windows boots. So, I would either need a way to get to WinPE using Remote Desktop, or a way to get access to a redirected console. I somehow would prefer a command line to Remote Desktop. Makes the whole experience more direct (and takes off the responsibility to somehow find out which IP address the server got assigned - I can redirect the boot to network on the command line, then wait for the boot and just continue there).

Yeah, I know... Point is, I need a way to roll out some server images and some workstation images. Nothing TOO large. I have virtual servers on both locations, and I was thinking of: * Installing a deploy server image there, which runs WDS. This would allow me to use WinPE 2.0 for automatic installation. As the server is preinstalled, my alternatives are using Ghost. Given that I run relatively standard hardware (NForce 4 chipset all along), my will to get a Ghpost 9 license (for the imaging) and work with some boot setup is limited. If I can get WinPE 2.0 to work, I would rather prefer to use this (new) way to do things. Gives me early help on setting things up, and it is a nice imaging technology. Is there any guidelines out yet on how to use BDD 3.0 Beta / WinPE 2.0 to install an image that contains a sysprepped Windows 2003 (as well as how to actually take a 2003 image - I mean, is there any catch for that?). How to fully automate that? BDD 3.0 B2 does not cover that topic too well in documentation (not supported at the moment). I have a WinPE 2.0 boot cd already and to my delight the network drivers just worked. So, I would really prefer to use ImageX for any imaging.

Not sure how many you need for capacity.... ...but the administrative minuimum is 3. That is called double redundancy. You want basically one to work on (installing sp), one that fails (while you install a serivce pack) and one that is still around. That means you need 3 DC's minimum.

Ok, STUPID thing. I am done with it. I havea job offer for some person smarter or more masochistic than me. Fixed price, please contact me privately at t.tomiczek@powernodes.com. I need RIS images prepared. Problem is integrating the drivers. I need to integrate, fully: * Broadcom drivers for the TYAN B/S2865 server line. * A decent set of NVidia SATA drivers. * Nvidia Network drivers. * NVidia video drivers. I need images for: * XP Prof * 2003 Standard x32 * 2003 Standard x64 The raw CD copies are available, as are al necessary components. As a bonus it would be nice if you coud automate the WIndows 2003 R2 post-install-Cd2-setup :-) I need that done in an asap fashion. Admin access to a XP instance via RDP can be provided as working place. If you ahve done that already, it is an easy job for you. Personally I do not have the time to spend even more weeks trying to get a sucking stupid bad idiotic driver integration model going. Please contact me off-list at t.tomiczek@powernodes.com.

No. Becasue I have no clue which files to actually edit. Main problem is that you can not just install the nfroce driver, it requires another bus driver first. As in: nfivdia seriously f****d this up. Anyone has a clue where I can find this RIS driver everyone seems to talk about occasionally?

It is a shuttle SN25P - with Shuttles own motherboard. The RIS in the BIOS does work, it starts. The problem is the text part of the setup, where things blow then. "Image does not contain a driver" blablabla. This type of error.

Same problem for me. Has anyone successfully solved this?