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I've not had too much problems with Realteks myself and they're quite widely supported by most OSs The 8139 series of cards don't have PXE onboard (if you buy the cheap ones), but you can boot them using the Microsoft PXE floppy. The only quirk that I've come across is that you need to copy your startrom.com and associated files into the root of you RemInst folder on you RIS server. Without doing this, it won't boot and will complain about the TFTP download failing. For £6 per card (or $10.49) you can't really go wrong. Broadcoms are swines - I'd stay away from them at all costs! I had to spend a week trying to build images for our Dell Optiplex systems at work and it wasn't a pleasant experience. Regards, Jim

We use a similar setup at our place of work, but we use GPO to release our software through AD. If you create a new policy in AD, you can specify which applications to install under Computer Configuration\Software Settings or User Configuration\Software Settings. Using this you can add software and automatically uninstall it when you remove it from the GPO. You can specify when to install it (logon, first run) and it's all pretty seamless. You can even specify transfer files and patches to apply (in .msp format). Have a look at www.AppDeploy.com - there's a whole host of information about publishing apps there. I hope this helps, Jim

I've finally cracked it! (after several hours and a visit from the Dominos man) What didn't work: 1. Re-flashing the BIOS (to the current and previous versions). 2. Booting from a Realtek NIC (which is supported by the MS PXE floppy) 3. Sitting looking forlorn. What did work: 1. Setting the BIOS to failsafe defaults and enabling the NIC. It turns out that the Fast A20 setting was causing the system to hang, I've switched it back to normal and the system boots as it should. Thanks once again for your help Andy. Cheers, Jim

Thanks mate, I'm running a W2k3SP1 RIS server at the moment. I'll give it a try (reflashing and using a PCI NIC), but I'm desperately trying to get it to start installing from the nForce3 onboard controller. I don't want to have to open the machine everytime I want to reinstall the OS I'm really disappointed in Shuttle, all they've managed to give me is "if it boots from the CD, nothing's wrong and it's not our problem". I don't suppose you know of any groups that specialise in nForce related issues do you? Thanks again for your help. Jim

Hi guys, I'm trying to deploy WinXP Pro using RIS onto my SN85G4v2. I've got a working RIS server and have deployed OSs to other machines, however when attempting to run an installation on my shuttle I don't get very far. So far I can: 1. Boot from the PXE BIOS into the OS Chooser. 2. Enter the admin username and password. 3. Select my OS type (32/64bit). 4. Select my OS (WinXP Pro). 5. Acknowledge that I'm going to wipe my PC and machine name details (including a really odd GUID comprising of mainly Fs). After this, the shuttle looks like it's attempting the second stage of a RIS install (starting WinXP textmode install) - the problem is that it never gets there, it will just hang with a black screen, even CTRL-ALT-DEL won't save me. If I disable my Si3512 I'm greeted with a random screen of coloured ASCII characters - if my Si3512 is enabled, it's blank. The nforce3 boot agent version is 191.0304. I've not yet slipstreamed my nForce3 ethernet drivers - but that shouldn't cause me an issue - it should just tell me to go away because it can't find a supported network card. Does anybody have any ideas? I've contact Shuttle and they've not been much use. Cheers, Jim