I am setting up BartPE to kick off an Unattended network install of XP. My problem is that when I try to map a drive, it can't find the connection for about another 30 seconds or so after the services have started. I have tried putting a delay in my batch file with a ping for a bout 30 seconds or so, still no dice. If the batch file terminates and I wait, I manually keep trying and eventually the command will map the drive. But that kind of defeats the purpose of an automated install.

Any ideas why it takes so long to "find the network" or what I can do to get my drive mapped other than pinging my local host for a couple minutes to stall?

What you are seeing is the network stack hasnt initialized yet. What i had to do to get arount this was to add a ping 127.0.0.1 command before I tried to map any drive.

R

I am actually doing that already. I thought it may have been a timing issue so i put in a ping to my localhost for about 30 hops which takes 30ish seconds (probably a bit less). I am outputting the results to >NUL so its not visible. I can try taking that out, but i don't think it will solve it. I may be able to the diskpart and format before the drive map to buy me a little time, but i think I may have already tried it.

the other thing i tried was to issue the net use command 2 times in a row. The second one generally worked. Are you sure the interface has completed loading? It takes about that much time and if you have it hidden you wont see it.

Even if i break the batch file and try net use multiple times it just goes after something behind the scenes finally happens. I could try it 20 times and it just decides to finally go.

The only part I had specifically hidden was the output of the ping so it wouldn't just fill up the screen. I can maximize the command window that is initializing the card and services. I assume the interface would be up otherwise tcpip, dhcp, and NLA wouldn't start.

Although taking another look at it, it seems as if maybe my problem is DHCP. I just looked at the ipconfig after the batch breaks, the ip goes from 0.0.0.0 to a 169.x.x.x address before it finally pulls a dhcp ip address. I have noticed other PCs on the network are slow getting addresses sometimes. Is this a server issue or can I speed it up somehow?

Are you issuing a factory -winpe to start your network?

You may also have a DHCP problem, check to make sure you have available IP's under the scope.

Plenty OF DHCP scope, it will pull an address, just takes a while. I am actually using BartPE so i didn't have to configure the winbom file. I could try using that instead. What i sould do is have my boss find the copy of WinPE he lost

I started with BartPE and after 3-4 months, I switched to WinPE and migrated the shell over. There were too many things that didnt work as advertised and I needed real support from MS. Now they will provide help anytime I need it.

It appears my problem is DHCP related. It doesn't get an address fast enough and the command just bombs out. I took out the command for BartPE and used the Factory -winpe command to start the network. It seems to be a little faster but not fast enough. I think I'll just have to get a realy copy of WinPE. I never had a problem with that taking so long in the past.

any idea why it would take 20-30 seconds to get an ip address from a windows server?

Thought I'd throw out my solution in case anyone else ever runs into the same issue. I ended up having to put 2 explicit ipconfig /renew statments in my batch file to try to get the ip address. Only once wasn't enough it would still time out. added the second one and it picked it up