[How To] Unattended RIS Installations

[RogueSpear]

Honestly, I think you need to read up a little bit on RIS itself. This wasn't mean to be a RIS tutorial, but rather a guide for applying unattended methods to RIS.

[brainstane]

Rogue,

Have you ever run across a way to force RIS into going into the disk partitioning mode when it detects more than one partition? I sometimes deploy machines that come with a "hidden" recovery partition on the HD which must be wacked via DISKPART before RIS works reliably.

If I leave this partition on the HD, when RIS runs it will occasionally skip the C:\ partition and create an E:\ partition after the recovery partition and attempt to install there. When this happens the installation will bomb out with the message "this machine does not have sufficient space to load the image you have selected"..any ideas on how to get around this from within RIS and without having to resort to a manual DISKPART prior to RIS?

thanks and any help is once again appreciated.

Hope these off-topic posts of mine are not construed as "threadcrapping"..I just havent been able to find a decent forum that deals with RIS stuff and am very interested in mastering this process.

[RogueSpear]

Unfortunately (or fortunately for me ) I have not run across a situation like that when RISing. Now this could be related or not I dont know - All of my RIS experience thus far has been with Windows 2000. So I don't know if some additional capabilities were put into Windows 2003 Server's implementation of RIS. I would imagine that this would have to be a common stumbling block that folks run into and there must be a way around it. I just don't know what the solution is.

[gentoobox]

Honestly, I think you need to read up a little bit on RIS itself.  This wasn't mean to be a RIS tutorial, but rather a guide for applying unattended methods to RIS.

When a installation of Windows XP starts up with RIS, it starts by copying the i386 folder to the local harddrive. if there is a distribution folder, it will also be copyed.

next it starts the normal Windows XP instalation, no diffrent to if it was started by a bootable CD.

With your method of installation, all the driverpacks will get copyed to the local harddrive by the distribution folder.

A script will be started, unpacking the drivers and found by Windows XP plug-and-play under the installation.

That's nice, but not if you have a newer netcard than windows XP supports.

You will get an error that your netcard is unsupported, and then the network administrator has to include the driver in the installation by copying it to the i386 folder. (no need to copy it to the distribution folder because of the driverpacks inclued)

The text portion of the Windows Installation need the drivers because it swithes from PXE (UNDI) to SMB mode.

I also dont see the point of compressing the pnf files as they are auto-generated by the binlsvc service when you include a new driver.

We have 21 Windows XP installations and 5 Windows 2003 installations in RIS. we also have about 15 diffrent client netcards.

When a new client arrives, we have to include a new network adaptor, and the driverpacks from BTS is a wonderfull source.

----

Are you sure it's a good idea to compress all those files (in the guide) netcards supported by a normal Windows XP SP2 RIS installation is no longer supported when i compress the drivers (sys, inf files)

----

My posts are ment to improve your guide and not to question your knowledge about RIS and unattended Windows XP installations.

Edited August 28, 2005 by gentoobox

[gentoobox]

Rogue,

Have you ever run across a way to force RIS into going into the disk partitioning mode when it detects more than one partition? I sometimes deploy machines that come with a "hidden" recovery partition on the HD which must be wacked via DISKPART before RIS works reliably.

If I leave this partition on the HD, when RIS runs it will occasionally skip the C:\ partition and create an E:\ partition after the recovery partition and attempt to install there. When this happens the installation will bomb out with the message "this machine does not have sufficient space to load the image you have selected"..any ideas on how to get around this from within RIS and without having to resort to a manual DISKPART prior to RIS?

thanks and any help is once again appreciated.

Hope these off-topic posts of mine are not construed as "threadcrapping"..I just havent been able to find a decent forum that deals with RIS stuff and am very interested in mastering this process.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I saw someone on the forum doing that with BartPE (or WindowsPE)

Install a version of BartPE on your RIS server (you should remove as much from the installation as you can for faster startup) make a script that deletes the partitions from the harddisk and then start the Windows XP installation.

Do you know about UseWholeDisk, Repartition and autopartition options in the ris answer (.sif) file ?

Are you deploying RISprep images or fresh installations with RIS ?

Further discussion should be made in a new thread.

Edited August 28, 2005 by gentoobox

[RogueSpear]

With your method of installation, all the driverpacks will get copyed to the local harddrive by the distribution folder.

A script will be started, unpacking the drivers and found by Windows XP plug-and-play under the installation.

That's nice, but not if you have a newer netcard than windows XP supports.

You will get an error that your netcard is unsupported, and then the network administrator has to include the driver in the installation by copying it to the i386 folder. (no need to copy it to the distribution folder because of the driverpacks inclued)

The text portion of the Windows Installation need the drivers because it swithes from PXE (UNDI) to SMB mode.

I also dont see the point of compressing the pnf files as they are auto-generated by the binlsvc service when you include a new driver.

We have 21 Windows XP installations and 5 Windows 2003 installations in RIS. we also have about 15 diffrent client netcards.

When a new client arrives, we have to include a new network adaptor, and the driverpacks from BTS is a wonderfull source.

----

Are you sure it's a good idea to compress all those files (in the guide) netcards supported by a normal Windows XP SP2 RIS installation is no longer supported when i compress the drivers (sys, inf files)

----

My posts are ment to improve your guide and not to question your knowledge about RIS and unattended Windows XP installations.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I have no problem with anyone questioning my knowledge of RIS. I am not some high authority on the topic. I never have and never will claim to know it all. But reading your posts, it's obvious to me that you did not read the entire guide or there are parts of it you missed. Everything in the guide works. I've done it. And there is a section in there about adding support for otherwise unsupported NICs. See steps 21 thru 23.

Edited August 28, 2005 by RogueSpear

[RogueSpear]

09/09/2005

- Updated compressing of files to include some .dll and .exe files.

- Updated RyanVM's Update Pack to cover V1.3.1.

- nLite V1.0 Beta 6 tested and works

- Longwinded dissertation about about adding NIC drivers and it's quirks.

[InTheWayBoy]

This is turning into an excellent guide...have you thought about making a simple webpage for it? If I ever get enough free time I would love to help with that. I have space to host and all that. Keep up the good work man!

[RogueSpear]

@InTheWayBoy, if you're capable of putting together a simple site and hosting it, I'd definately be interested. It's one of those things I've been meaning to get to for so long now and in all reality.. just will never have the time to do it.

I've also been putting together a very in depth guide to using InstallShield AdminStudio for repackaging applications into MSI files and then making a 7z switchless installer out of it. It's turning out to be wayyyy too much for a post here at MSFN. I don't even know what the limits are here for attaching screenshots.

PM me and we can discuss it.

[rojanu]

I have had some trouble with NIC drivers getting the Blue screen with driver error and prees any key to exit. After reading the Broadcom FAQs on my NIC, I found out that I had to put my drivers in "OemPnPDriversPath" (and of course put directory path into answer file e.g. OemPnPDriversPath=Drivers\NIC) as well as i386 directory and now looks

I don't know why I did not think of that , very simple isn't it. perhaps did not read the error message very well

[Fencer128]

Hi,

If anyone is interested in using a batch file to automatically integrate RIS risetup installs with RyanVM and/or BTS packs then please check out the following topic:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=57010

Thanks,

Andy

[RogueSpear]

I am currently reworking this guide as I have discovered several issues that need to be addressed. There are issues requiring special consideration that I did not discover until this week with RVM V1.3.1.

Using this guide in it's current form is not advised as there could be some unseen yet very real problems with workstations installed with this RIS process.

For the time being, I would recommend that you check out Fencer128's application "RISult." I have not personally tested is work, though that is forthcoming.

[djsleepy]

I have followed the guide, but when I integrate RyanVM + XPize and run the setup I get the following error @ the "Regestering Components" Screen.

Windows Cannot Load the Internet Configuration Library

(ICFGNT.DLL). The following error occured:

The specified module could not be found.

can someone please help, or tell me if they are getting the same problem????

[RogueSpear]

@djsleepy, I would check the source directory to see if that file exists in either uncompressed (DLL) or compressed (DL_) form. Did you use nLite on the source and remove something perhaps that would have eliminated that file?

[RogueSpear]

I would like to request that this topic be "unstickied" in favor of a revised RIS guide that I posted http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=57218.

Thank you.