I've read through a lot of information at http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/ as well as in a book I purchased: "Managing Microsoft's Remote Installation Services" and I have a few questions before I even really get started. 1) Why edit images on the RIS server? Why not just create your own custom Windows installation source BEFORE creating a RIS "image" from it? I understand the use of editing after the fact as the hardware changes. 2) Why use the $OEM folder to include drivers or anything for that matter? Why not just include your drivers in the same location where Microsoft puts the drivers they include with Windows to begin with, replacing as necessary? Would this not circumvent the issue of copying unnecessary data to the client machines? 3) If you RipPrep an installed machine, is the result an 'image' in the same sense as Ghost for example? Meaning, is it a sector imaging technology and will this ripprepped image install in minutes just like my Ghost images? 4) Is it really true that you can not install and/or use RIS on a multi-home machine? What if I just disable the second NIC, will that work? 5) As this book I have describes the "one-images-fits-all" logitistal approach meaning they suggest creating subfolders underneath $OEM within the WinXP source, but instead of creating subfolders for each machine type instead just create them for each hardware type: i.e. SoundBlaster Live!, SoundBlaster AWE64, etc. That would be opposed to creating folders for an HP NC6230 and an HP NC6000 with all their drivers underneath each respective subfolder, thereby potentially creating a lot of duplicate files and even more unnecessary data. So my question: don't some drivers provided by OEMs differ from those Microsoft makes available or even the hardware manufacturer itself? For example if you buy an HP machine with an ATI video card HP may potentially have a different driver than that which you would download directlry from ATI or from Windows Update. Therefore, wouldn't it be a really BAD idea to just dump drivers into general folders for "Audio" even if it is more specific like "SoundBlaster" or "Sound Blaster Live!"? I've personally witnessed on a few occassions where drivers from MS DID NOT work for NICs, but the OEM driver worked just fine. It is rare in my experience, but it does happen. 6) Does the SIS Groveler even work? Taking into account point 2 and 5 above I don't understand what the big deal is if Groveler actually works. If it works it is supposed to generate single software instances. Am I misunderstanding something? We're not supposed to install RIS images to a partition with any other data because the SIS Groveler may cause problems as a result of the way it works. Well, I have it running on a file server with hundreds of gigs of data and I don't see a problem. Is groveler even doing anything?
