Drivers Trough RIS

[apronk]

I've been trying to figure out how to get the RIS installation to look trough a network location instead of a $oem$\$1 location. I've tought of this theory:

Since InstallFilesPath = "\\%SERVERNAME%\RemInst\%INSTALLPATH%\%MACHINETYPE%"

makes you think RIS knows the servername and RemInst path then you should be able to do this :

OemPnPDriversPath="\\%SERVERNAME%\Drivers\audio1;\\%SERVERNAME%\Drivers\video1"

(the \\%SERVERNAME%\Drivers share has the same NTFS and Share permissions as RemInst)

However this doesn't work. Anyone have any idea on how to get this to work ?

[RogueSpear]

The drivers need to be on the hard disk during the client install. That's why I always suggest doing a Method 2 install with RIS. Just put the .7z files in $OEM$\$1.

[apronk]

Yeah I understand that, but there should be a way to let windows search itself for the drivers on a network location (I remember it being done in one of my old jobs with windows 98, each time you logged onto the network the loginscript would looks for new/updated drivers on a network location) RIS Should be able to do the same without the help of external programs, shouln't it ?

Especially since Method 1 is MS preferred. But when having more then 1 RIS image, it seems pointless for each image to have a $oem$\$1 directory which contains the exact same data.

[RogueSpear]

No, you can't have the computer search a network location for drivers during the GUI portion of setup where device PnP enumeration is done (T-39). First of all, your NIC isn't active since it's a device itself. Second, the network configuration happens after device installation, so even when the NIC gets installed you would still have to wait for it to be configured.

[apronk]

I am under the impression that the NIC is active, since it gets all info from the RIS Server on the network. Maybe im thinking too simple and that only during the initial RIS boot there is a network conenction and it copies all neccesary files to the local computer and during the pnp/drivers there is no network connection...

[RogueSpear]

The network is not active again until the part where it says "Configuring Network" is finished. I can verify that it is active from cmdlines because I download files at that stage.