WDS deployment

[surfertje]

After installing WDS on a windows2003 SP2 server and WAIK i want to get started with deploying windows XP pro sp2 machines and Vista. The clients are Dell machines. The documentation is talking about boot, capture images e.d..

I have following the manual for WDS and booted a client. On a other post on this forum i state that the client cannot connect to the WDS server. I believe that this comes because the network driver aren't up to date in the standard image...

I am asking myself what does WDS do? is it using WindowsPE, Imagex? etc. When i boot a client and choose F12 PXE boot what is beiing used to boot?

When i want to add drivers to a image that is for booting how do i add the new drivers, like the manual in windowsPE says? command prompt and imagex commands etc?

I like to know more of the details what is goiing on when booting from PXE/ WDS server...

[Tripredacus]

First of all, take a look at this guide:

http://www.msfn.org/board/GUIDE-Creating-W...-X-t101383.html

When you press F12, there is a virtual network driver loaded by your computer's BIOS that enables TCP/IP and other things, and knows how to boot to the network. Presuming your PXE Server is set up properly, you should be able to boot into the PE or whatever else you are selecting. For example, if you are using Image Manager, you should get a prompt for which install images to apply.

If you are booting into the PE (like I do), then the PE will attempt to load the NIC driver from its own driver store when you run WPEUtil InitializeNetwork. If your NIC driver isn't found, it won't give you an error, but if you run IPCONFIG you won't see any information.

You can install more drivers into the PE with the PEIMG command on the server using the PE Tools Command Prompt. Make sure you are using either Vista 32bit or Vista 64bit drivers depending on which PE you are using.

I also have a server guide here to make sure your settings are correct. My config may be slightly different but you will get the idea hopefully.

http://www.msfn.org/board/A-Step-by-Step-g...-f-t113927.html