Windows 2003 Universal Image not working - FIXED!

[jamdev12]

Hi all,

I don't know if any of you have played around with making WDS work in an IBM blade environment. I have built an image of Windows 2003 from a VM. I can deploy this image without problems on my HS20s and LS20s. The MassStorage controllers on those is LSI-1030 U320 SCSI. When it comes to HS21, which has a MassStorage controller LSI SAS-1064E, though the systems just constantly reboot. I know the problem has to do with the MassStorage Driver not been installed properly. I have tried multiple things from including OEMPnPDriversPath in sysprep.inf file to using nliteos to integrate the correct drivers within the ISO image, deploy it within a VM and then take a snapshot and deploy it to HS21s. I've also even tried building the MassStorageSection within the sysprep.inf after adding the drivers with nliteos without a different result. I know this should work because after building the ISO with nliteos and the proper drivers, I have booted the server with it and I can install windows.

I would like to create a universal image for my 3 systems, but it seems this is futile. There seems to be no way of making the universal image work with the HS21. What can I be doing wrong?

By the way I'm using the ServerGuide CD for my drivers.

Thanks in advance and any help would be greatly appreciated,

Jesus

Edited November 7, 2008 by jamdev12

[jamdev12]

For those with similar issues, I have found the solution to this problem.

I finally figured out what I was doing incorrectly while I was trying to make this work. After running sysprep and restarting the system for capturing, I would capture the system, export the image to a directory in my WDS server, use imagex to mount it and change things around in the sysprep.inf file. Well there are certain things you can and others you can't because the changes you make to the image file offline do not translate. For example I had inserted the PnP IDs of the devices in the inf file thinking the sysprep process would take these values and change them at boot time when the image was applied. This is not the case. You need to insert these PnP IDs in the sysprep.inf file before running sysprep. Once you run sysprep, these PnP IDs are inserted into the registry to give the system the ability to detect at boot time what device driver it should use for accessing the mass storage device.

http://www.vernalex.com/guides/sysprep/mass.shtml

The site above on the second to last paragraph gave me the hint I needed to make this work as it states, "It should be noted that if you enter an invalid path to the driver then when you run SysPrep you will receive an error that states "unable to update the registry" and then SysPrep will quit. At this point you should verify your mass storage device driver list as one of the paths is incorrect."

Once I saw the unable to update the registry clause, the light bulb went on and I redid the image with the PnP IDs for the HS20, LS20 and HS21s and redeployed it to all 3 and walla everything worked.

One last thing which I found interesting looking through the forums is that quotes around a path on OEMPnPDriversPath does not work. So if you want to have this OEMPnPDriversPath in your sysprep.inf file it should look like this;

OEMPnPDriversPath=\drivers\video;\drivers\audio

Not like this;

OEMPnPDriversPath="\drivers\video;\drivers\audio"

Same rules apply in terms of the amount of characters you can have in this entry so make the path short like so;

OEMPnPDriversPath=\d\v1;\d\a1

And remember that a carriage return will break this so make your path contagious.

Thanks and happy cloning.

Jesus