RIS Activation Trouble

[DjCoax]

Ok,

This is what comes up for me. At our company we get delivered laptops with a preinstalled Windows Xp on.

Of course , i dont want that , so i have created a master version with all applications on and created a RIPREP image. I'm now deploying the image to 10 new computers , and because i,m using the windows serial from one of those pcs , it wont activate anymore after 5 times.

I have licenses for every pc , but he wont activate.

How can i bypass this problem ?

[luke.mccormick]

if you have a vol lic agreement then use your vol lic serial number.

[hosebeast]

If you do not have a Volume License for XP, you cannot use UnattendMode=FullUnattended in your SIF file. You must omit ProductKey from the SIF file and specify either DefaultHide, GuiAttended, or ProvideDefault for UnattendMode.

This means that each machine will stop and wait for a product key to be entered when it gets to that point. Also, your OEM must supply a product key which can be activated. Large OEMs (known as SLP) may ship COA stickers with dummy product keys that cannot be activated; you must use their "recovery CD" to reinstall pre-activated.

An OEM licensed copy of Windows XP is not the same as a retail license. An OEM license does not give you the legal right to reinstall (via RIS, Ghost, FPP CD-ROM, or any other means) Windows XP unless you separately obtain an "upgrade" license via Volume, Retail, or other non-OEM channel. For most typical organizations, this essentially means that they must purchase a Volume License on top of the OEM preloaded copy which comes with new machines, in order to be able to re-image the machines legally.

Don't try to tell me this sucks. I'm just telling you what the license terms are. I didn't say I like them.

[RogueSpear]

Well it does suck and it's why I always make sure that the computers I buy for clients come with no license at all. Unfortunately this leaves out a lot of vendors because many will not sell a computer without a license or if they do, it's the same price anyway.

After so many years of dealing with this crap, I have nearly the same degree of contempt for Microsoft as I have for oil companies, lawyers, and child molesters.

[DjCoax]

Well,

We actually have a volume license AND an MSDN subscription. I used the CD that came with our MSDN subscription and not the Volume Licence CD.

And when i tried to install a new pc i got the following error message :

Setup cannot format the partition.

Your computer may not have enough memory to perform this operation, or your Windows 2000 CD may contain some corrupted files.

Setup cannot continue. To quit setup, press F3.

I looked at it and apparently this happens with MSDN-cds :

If you created the RIS image from Microsoft MSDN media, the above is expected behavior.

You must remove the MSDN CD image from the RIS server and use a retail copy of Windows 2000 Professional.

NOTE: You will experience the same problem with RIPREP images if your RIS server has a MSDN version of Windows 2000 Professional as the CD-based image.

Can you believe that ?

Luckily i found a bypass to this problem :

Anyway, I thought I'd use RIS to deploy XP Pro to all the virtual machines I had setup in Virtual Server. Unfortunately, I ran across a snag. Here's what I did:

I setup one Virtual Machine exactly the way I wanted it including VM Additions.

I used riprep to copy an image to my RIS server so I can deploy the image to the rest of the virtual machines.

I modified the .sif file to include all the information needed to make a truly hands-off installation.

So far, so good, right? All I needed to do was turn on the rest of the VM's, hit F12 for network boot, and install away. Unfortunately, just as the RIS installation got to the point where it is supposed to format the virtual machine's hard drive, I got this error message:

Setup cannot format the partition.

Your computer may not have enough memory to perform this operation, or your Windows XP CD may contain some corrupted files.

Setup cannot continue. To quit setup, press F3.

Talk about nerve racking. I searched Google high and low as to what may cause this issue. I completely re-did my RIS setup, double-checked DHCP authorization, the works. Then, I happened upon this article:

Error Message: Cannot Find Previous Version of Windows Installed on This Computer

I encourage you to read that article in its entirety, but to make a long story short, the article mentions this in the "Cause" section:

This behavior occurs because the Windows 2000 Professional Image on the RIS server was created from Microsoft MSDN media that contains multiple versions of the Windows 2000 operating system. The Windows 2000 Professional version on the MSDN media contains a Txtsetup.sif file witha different value in the "SetupSourcePath" field. . .

First off, I don't have MSDN media, I have TechNet media. But I got to thinking anyway (not to mention the fact that I tried everything else). So I got on my RIS server and did a search for Txtsetup.sif. Behold, there it was. One copy. And it was in the original CD image RIS requires you to setup when you first install RIS. I opened the file in notepad and searched for the "Setupsourcepath" setting and it had a value that looked like this:

SetupSourcePath="\english\Pro_With_SP2"

Which is the location of Windows XP Pro SP2 on my TechNet CD. I pretty much already knew the answer at this point, but because corroberation is such a wonderful thing, I yanked out my retail XP CD and double-checked the same thing. It said:

SetupSourcePath="\"

So I made the change to the file on my RIS server, restarted my virtual machine and HOORAAYY!! Setup was able to format the virtual hard drive and continue on!

So for those of you with TechNet or MSDN subscriptions but still want to try out RIS, here is your possible fix. Please keep in mind, however, that you should be doing this for a TEST ENVIRONMENT. Please do not deploy TechNet or MSDN software in your production environment. Not only will you be violating your license, but you will also not recieve support.

[hosebeast]

The MSDN media issue only exists with the multiboot CD-ROM. The ISO images available on the Subscriber Download site are separate (not multiboot) so they don't have a problem with RIS. Also, if you chose the DVD option for your subscription, you receive both a multiboot DVD and a separate DVD which contains ISO images you can burn of CDs which are RIS-compatible.