ipierce

Well, I was able to get RIS to do what I wanted, by tricking it. If you read the stuff in the KB article 324573 you'll see that RIS checks the version of ntoskrnl.exe that you copied up from your Windows installation CD against the version of ntoskrnl.exe that resides on the machine you'd like to RIPrep and use for future images. If the versions don't match, the RIS server barfs and won't let you upload the image. (This to me seems like a pretty glaring flaw in RIS implementation, one that stems from the use of Single Instance Storage. SIS made sense when I couldn't buy a 78.4 GB HDD... now it's just using CPU cycles to save room on a NTFS partition that is in no way full. But I digress) The upshot is that if you apply a hotfix that updates ntoskrnl, you can't stage that image back to the RIS server. My solution: I went through the back door. I just replaced the original ntoskrnl.exe on the RIS server with the hotfixed ntoskrnl.exe from the workstation I wanted to RIPrep. Error bypassed For what it's worth, I did use GreenMachine's XPCREATE application to create an ISO for Windows XP with all the hotfixes and optional components (.NET framework, etc.). I pointed RISetup to the I386 folder that XPCREATE made, and then rolled out a workstation using RBFG and pulled down the XPCREATE I386 image. The OS installed, and then all the hotfixes got installed. But the particular hotfix that updates ntoskrnl.exe didn't get slipstreamed into I386; it was run towards the end of Setup on the new workstation. So I still ran up against the original problem of mismatched ntoskrnl.exe on RIS server and new workstation. That's when I decided it would probably be much easier to make an end run around the whole hotfix process and just manually patch ntoskrnl.exe on my RIS server. When installing from XPCREATE's I386 folder, all the hotfixes installed silently -- except for two. The first one is KB817778, and it threw an "invalid arguments specified" error. My guess is that it's not the type of hotfix (TYPE1, blue/white icon) that it appears to be based on its icon. Also, Q823718 asked if I wanted to reboot now; maybe it was miscategorized too. Based on the icon it's a TYPE2 but it wasn't completely "silent." Thanks for your help with this project guys. Now I'm off to create an administrative install point for Office XP...(/me crosses fingers) and install that on my target machine. GreenMachine your XPCREATE is quite a piece of work and I'm glad I found it!

Coolio, thanks GreenMachine. I'll have a go and see what I can do. Also, since the links have changed, you'll probably want to update the README.TXT that comes with XPCREATE. It's got the old link.

Okay, here's the situation. I'm rolling out XP. I want to use RIS for speed and so everyone gets the same build. I want the XP that gets installed to have as many of the programs we'll be using as possible, but for right now I'm stuck just on the Microsoft stuff. I ran RISETUP on my server and had it copy over the install files from my Windows XP CD-ROM. The CD has service pack 1 applied already. (It's a gold volulme license key CD from Microsoft, not something I slipstreamed myself.) I boot a computer using the RBFG.exe boot disk. The machine finds the RIS server and XP gets installed. I go to the newly created machine and run Windows Update to get the latest hotfixes, .NET framework, stuff like that. At this point, I've got XP SP1 with all the latest updates and Microsoft software (DX9, .NET framework, etc.) Before going any further I want to put an image of that system back up on my RIS server. But I can't. I run riprep from the RemInst share on my RIS server, and I get the error message "The RIS server to which you are attempting to post this installation does not have the correct CD-based image..." This error is discussed in MS KB article 324573 -- http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;324573 Some hotfix I installed modifies ntoskrnl.exe. The version on my RIS server is 5.1.2600.1106 and the version on my new XP box is 5.1.2600.1151. Because of the mismatch RIS won't accept the OS image. (I'm not sure which hotfix modifies ntoskrnl.exe, maybe it would be easiest to just not apply that one and run it in a script after the OS is installed...) My plan was to create an install of XP that's got all the latest hotfixes applied. This looks to be extremely time consuming. I'm thinking now that the easiest thing will be a batch file to run Qchain and all the hotfixes I want. As new hotfixes come out, I'll just need to modify by batch file and make sure the hotfix executable gets into the right folder. It's very annoying that I can slipstream a service pack, but can't (easily) slipstream a hotfix. The Microsoft suggestion described in http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/pro/dow...p1/hfdeploy.asp involves expanding the Qxxxxxx.exe hotfixes, finding the latest binaries, and replacing the compressed binaries in my RIS i386 folder with the ones from the expanded hotfixes. Then you have to make a list of all the .cat files as well. For twenty-two hotfixes, that's WAAAAY too much work. I'm getting paid by the hour but I need to get this job done too Thanks for taking the time to read all this! And thanks for fixing your link GreenMachine. Mabye my answer is there.

GreenMachine, it looks like your links for the script are not on the site any more. I would love to get my hands on this script since it fixes a big problem -- I want to use RIS to roll out Windows XP, but post-SP1 hotfixes modify ntoskrnl.exe and so I can't create a RIS image unless I can either slipstream the hotfixes into my I386 folder, or the method used here -- just put all the hotfixes in a script to run after setup. Anyway, when I try any of GreenMachine's links, I get 404.