[Discontinued] AutoRIS V2.10

[RogueSpear]

1) At the very end of the install process, I noticed that I was logged in. In my place of work, thats probably not a good idea so how can I change that so at the final reboot, I dont auto login?

In one of the scripts you had to enter in the Admin name and password in order for that to happen. If I remember correctly, I commented the area with instructions to put in your name and pass. If you don't want it to do that, simply replace the name and password with nothing but a double quote "". The reason I put it in there is that there is always something that I want to do when the install is finished.

Why am I getting this? I havent changed the AutoRIS created build since installing this machine

earlier so I'm not sure why this is happening. Any quick fix to sort this?

It's been literally over three years since I've bothered to mess around with RIPrep. Once I figured out that everything can be done with scripts and group policy, I abandoned all efforts with it. Given the choice I will always go with a real install.

[tarquel]

The other guy I know uses an older version of AutoRIS - he hasnt said why tho - maybe its something to do with this.

Cheers

Nath

[RogueSpear]

Well I've run into the exact same problem as you with RIPrep. It seems like sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It really seems like a half baked addon to RIS itself and with the new WIM technology Microsoft is developing I doubt that they're going to pay much more attention to it.

[tarquel]

Unfortunately, it is necessary to use riprep as I've said before - because we have different applications on different computers around the school. You'll find this is the case in alot of schools [and possibly organisations] where RIS is used.

But not being a large school, I'm gonna just go for the simple option

After the RIS install, I use batch scripts anyhow to install the apps needed lol so it isnt essential and at least i dont have to waste time with crappy sysprep ;)

Thanks again.

Nath

[Allistah]

Hi RogueSpear,

I have a question about your instructions.. On Step 9 or 10 (can't remember off hand) when I'm supposed to make a fresh RIS image on my server, is that supposed to be XP SP0 or XP SP2? Also in the instructions, I struggled a bit with the BTS part because I had no clue what that was. Also it says the "first part" and I didn't know what the first part was.

I'm still going through this and trying to get it to work so I'm hoping I'll be able to post back soon with some good results.

Thanks!

-Allistah

UPDATE: Ok, so I did a full install with the AutoRIS image and it worked. I did not however get my NIC detected. It should have been though since it's an Intel Pro 1000 and I added the BTS NIC driver pack. I'll play around with it again and see if I did anything wrong.

BTW, when I'm doing the BTS stuff, should I be choosing method 1, 2 or 3? I want the method that works the most often without issues.

Thanks again, a great tool. :-)

Edited March 4, 2006 by Allistah

[RogueSpear]

Hi RogueSpear,

I have a question about your instructions.. On Step 9 or 10 (can't remember off hand) when I'm supposed to make a fresh RIS image on my server, is that supposed to be XP SP0 or XP SP2? Also in the instructions, I struggled a bit with the BTS part because I had no clue what that was. Also it says the "first part" and I didn't know what the first part was.

UPDATE: Ok, so I did a full install with the AutoRIS image and it worked. I did not however get my NIC detected. It should have been though since it's an Intel Pro 1000 and I added the BTS NIC driver pack. I'll play around with it again and see if I did anything wrong.

BTW, when I'm doing the BTS stuff, should I be choosing method 1, 2 or 3? I want the method that works the most often without issues.

You should always generate your RIS image using an XP SP2 CD. AutoRIS' implementation of BTS integration is rather clumsy at best. I can only hope that his new slipstreamer is released before too long. I've been very hesitant to dedicate a lot of my dwindling spare time to making a smooth implementation of something that's going to be totally obsolete at some point soon. I've found the easiest method to be 2. I would imagine methods 1 and 2 would both work just fine, but a Method 1 integration into a RIS image would be a real pain in the neck the way things are now.

[Allistah]

Thanks for replying. I'll make sure that I only do method 2. So at this point I should be setting RunBTS to NO in the autoris.ini file right? Now since I'll be doing that, do I just follow the instructions for his stuff manually? I mean, I've already run the slipstreamer file and it unpacked(unzipped, whatever) something which was pretty fast, unlike method 1 where it unpacked stuff for a number of minutes. Is that what you see when you do a method 2 (it unpacks stuff really fast and then is done)?

So after I do that, is there anything else that I should be doing manually before I run autoris? The reason I ask is that I went ahead and did an run with AutoRIS with what I thought was all the drivers and when the OS was done installing, it didn't detect my Intel Pro 1000 MT NIC. So I thought I must have done something wrong with the BTS portion of the setup.

Thanks for the help RogueSpear, I appreciate it. All the other stuff and AutoRIS seems to be working just fine. :-)

Hey btw, since you've got a lot of experience with RIS setups, have you been able to get two DHCP servers in a 50/50 config to work where the RIS server is only on one of the DHCP servers?

Thanks again,

-Allistah

EDIT: Hey, can I just skip all the BTS steps and add my own drivers to the $OEM$ dir once the image is on the RIS server? I've manually done that in the past for my Intel Pro 1000 and it seemed to work fine.

EDIT: If I do this: "If you do not need to integrate mass storage drivers into your RIS image, all you need to do is copy the Driver Pack 7-zip archive files into the $OEM$\$1 subdirectory and use my Method 2 Helper Addon On." can I just copy all of the driver packs to this directory and all the drivers will be included? Also if I do this do I need to set OEM=Yes in the autoris.ini file? Whats special about mass storage drivers? If I want those in my drivers, do I have to do something different? Sorry for all the questions, I'm just trying to understand all this stuff to make sure I'm doing things the right way.

Edited March 5, 2006 by Allistah

[Quazl]

I have aquick question:

What is the difference between the NIC drivers that come with AutoRis and the NIC drivers that are with BTS?

[RogueSpear]

I've modified the .INF files so that they will work with RIS.

[Quazl]

Should I leave out that driver pack?

[RogueSpear]

No. See NIC drivers in RIS act in a similar way to mass storage drivers with a CD install (and also with a RIS install actually). You need to have only the .inf and .sys files for a given NIC in the i386 directory. This allows the RIS installation to complete the text mode portion of the setup. The PnP enumeration during the GUI phase of setup is completely different.

You need to use one of BTS' methods in order for this latter PnP device setup to complete properly. Here is an example of what I mean:

I had properly setup drivers in the i386 directory that allowed a Broadcom NIC to boot into RIS and complete the text mode portion of the setup, however I forgot to stick my BTS DriverPDriver Packack 7-Zip archive files in the proper place before running an install. I set the install on it's way and went about my business. About an hour later I noticed the OOBE screen on the monitor. What happened was that the NIC was not properly detected or installed because setup was unable to find the drivers in the path defined in the registry (by SetDevicePath.exe from BTS Method 2).

Years ago I never had to worry about this because all I was RISing was computers with 3Com and older Intel Pro 100 NICs. When it finally came time to start integrating drivers for both the RIS boot and for the PnP enumeration, it really took me a long time to understand what was going on. All of the documentation from hardware vendors really doesn't do a good job of explaining all of this. And as far as Microsoft's online documentation goes, well it's pretty vast to say the least, so finding all of the information in one place was rather difficult.

Once you get the hang of things though, you'll be sailing along in no time.

[Fencer128]

@Quazl

The DriverPack_LAN will give you the Windows drivers (e.g. when windows has installed the LAN drivers will be installed). The RIS drivers that RogueSpear is talking about are text mode only. They should be placed in the i386 folder (e.g. they are used by RIS during text-mode setup and then abandoned). Without the drivers that RogueSpear is talking about RIS will probably not recognise the NIC and you will not be able to get started on the RIS build.

To cut a long story short - you'll probably need both.

Cheers

Andy

EDIT: Doh, seems like I was just beaten to it

Edited March 8, 2006 by Fencer128

[Quazl]

Thanks fellahs. It took me a few tries to get it right.

I am testing a machine right now.

The funny thing is that I had a harder time using AutoRis. I do better doing it manually. I don't know why because I follow the AutoRIS VBS to the 'T', it just seem to work very well for me. I think it has to do with running it on the actual RIS server. I did it this way because the BTS packs didn't do right from a client machine.

I think that I got the driverpacks correctly because the machine that I am testing on is taking along time after the first reboot (The beginning of the GUI part) and the hard drive is really working hard.

If it says that my watchfordriversigningpolicy.exe cannot be found in C:\ then I must have put it in the wrong place.

Again, thanks fellahs.

[chiners_68]

Just a copule of questions..

i have set Autoris.ini to copy $oem$ files to server but for some reason its not doing this what could be the cause?

the $oem$ folder is in c:\autoris\$oem$ where autoris puts it when autoris is extracted.

cheers

Edited March 14, 2006 by chiners_68

[RogueSpear]

V2.00 - 03/26/2006

- Finally I broke down and put the code in to do a Method 2 BTS DriverPack integration. Method 2 is the only one supported and will be the only one supported until the next gen BTS Slipstreamer is released. In order for the integration to work you must use the Method 2 Helper Addon that I include with either the RyanVM Integrator or nLite. In order to get the DriverPack Sound packs to function properly with HD sound adapters, you must integrate RyanVM's Post SP2 Update Pack with either the RVM Integrator or nLite.

- I completely reworked all of the scripts. These will be better documented shortly in another thread which I will link to. This new set of scripts is completely modular. They will work with either a RIS or CD/DVD based install. There are two basic requirements - you must use my cmdlines.vbs script and the file 999_settings.ini must be located in $OEM$\$1 (for RIS) or %CDROM$\OEM (for CD/DVD). If there is a script that you don't want to use in RunOnceEx, just leave it out - everything is autodetected now. Some initial documentation is located in the 999_settings.ini file.

- There is now a choice between using either WMI or SysInternal's PsService to restart the BINL service. This will hopefully eliminate the issues with Windows Server 2003 throwing up a permissions error. The selection is a setting in AutoRIS.ini. Due to licensing restrictions I am unable to include PsService with the AutoRIS distribution. You can download it from SysInternals directly here.

I've tested out all of the new features numerous times and it all seems to work great, but there's nothing like putting it out in the wild and getting some real feedback. Now version 1.52 was downloaded over 2,000 times and with the exception of a couple people, I've heard virtually nothing. I'll be particularly interested in hearing whether or not the PsService implementation solves the permission issue for 2003 users.

I don't have any computers with a special mass storage controller to test on. In all of my tests the integration completes without error and the OS installs without error. But this is really only half a test since the extra drivers are not being used. If you do have problems that are mass storage related, please refer to the DriverPack Mass Storage forum to see if there are any outstanding issues with your hardware.