RIS Recommendations

[jb3rry]

Is there a preferred or recommended way to set up and unattended XP cd for use with RIS? for example INF vs RunonceEx? My current CD is based off RunOnce.

I am also looking at being able to tie in an unattended install of Office from a network drive.

Any opinions or recommendations would be appreciated.

[icarus]

All our installs are done using a .sif file. We point to all our network software installs through it.

We install office from a network drive. We have a corporate copy so no keys are required and we use /qb at the end sor a silent install.

[pthomas]

For all of our RIS server installs, I've just stuck to the tried and true RunOnceEx based install. But either way should work fine. RunOnceEx is nice because you don;t need to make any changes.

Porting an unattended stand-alone install over to a RIS install is quite easy. Run "risetup", point it to your cd image (your custom made unattended CD) and let it copy files over.

*Note* RIS expects some folders to be on the install source its copying from, like the "lang" folder. If you just make sure the folder exists, the copy process will go fine and you can still keep a slimmed down image on the RIS server. Of course, with the SIS service, that keeps copies of files from ever happening...

The unattended ofice install shouldn't be bad at all. IT depends slightly on what version of office you are using.

See one of the best guides for this here to answer your Office install question:

http://unattended.msfn.org/

Enjoy,

Paul

[pthomas]

Oh, and the majority of stuff in your winnt.sif file can be copied over into the i386\templates\ristndrd.sif file. Just don;t delete any of the RIS specific stuff. Here's what we use for our ristndrd.sif file:

[data]    floppyless = "1"

    msdosinitiated = "1"

    OriSrc = "\\%SERVERNAME%\RemInst\%INSTALLPATH%\%MACHINETYPE%"

    OriTyp = "4"

    LocalSourceOnCD = 1

    DisableAdminAccountOnDomainJoin = 1

    AutomaticUpdates=yes

[setupData]

    OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect"

    SetupSourceDevice = "\Device\LanmanRedirector\%SERVERNAME%\RemInst\%INSTALLPATH%"

[unattended]

    UnattendMode=FullUnattended

    OemSkipEula=Yes

    TargetPath=WinXP

    FileSystem=NTFS

    NtUpgrade=No

    OverwriteOemFilesOnUpgrade=No

    OemPreinstall=Yes

    UnattendSwitch="yes"

    WaitForReboot="No"

    DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore

    nondriversigningpolicy=Ignore

OemPnPDriversPath="Drivers\002_SATA;Drivers\004_NvidiaGART;Drivers\005_NvidiaIDE;Drivers\006_NvidiaSMBus;Drivers\007_NvidiaMemCtl;Drivers\008_NvidiaAudioDrv;Drivers\009_NvidiaAudioUtl;Drivers\010_NvidiaEthernet;Drivers\015_AC97;Drivers\020_RealtekLan;Drivers\030_ATIVideo;Drivers\040_NvidiaVideoDrivers\050_chipsetVia;Drivers\060_chipsetSis;"

[userData]

    ProductID=*******************

    FullName="*************"

    OrgName="****************"

    ComputerName=%MACHINENAME%

[GuiUnattended]

    AdminPassword="**********"

    EncryptedAdminPassword=NO

    AutoLogon=Yes

    AutoLogonCount=2

    OEMSkipRegional=1

    TimeZone=%TIMEZONE%

    OemSkipWelcome=1

[Display]

    BitsPerPel = 32

    XResolution = 1280

    YResolution = 1024

    VRefresh = 70

[Networking]

    InstallDefaultComponents=Yes

    ProcessPageSections=Yes

[NetServices]

MS_Server=params.MS_PSched

[identification]

    JoinDomain=%MACHINEDOMAIN%

    DoOldStyleDomainJoin=Yes

[RemoteInstall]

Repartition = Yes

UseWholeDisk = Yes

[OSChooser]

Description ="WinXP Pro with Service Pack 2 v8.19.2004"

Help ="Automatically installs WinXP with Service Pack 2"

LaunchFile = "%INSTALLPATH%\%MACHINETYPE%\templates\startrom.com"

ImageType =Flat

Version="5.1"

[Components]

    msmsgs=off

    msnexplr=off

    freecell=off

    hearts=off

    minesweeper=off

    pinball=off

    solitaire=off

    spider=off

    zonegames=off

[TerminalServices] ;added 1-14-2004

    AllowConnections=1            ; Enables Remote Desktop

Always useful to have a good working example,

Paul

[jb3rry]

Thanks.....I just wanted to make sure there were not any issues running a custom build via RIS.

Thanks again