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[How To] - Use RIS to supply any bootdisk to clients


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In this howto, I will show how to use Microsoft RIS (and a few other programs) to take any bootable diskette you may have and make it deliverable through pxe. This will prove valuable to anyone who has had a critical bootdisk fail after a drive out to a branch office. I use this method for maintenance of our computers, partitioning our hard drives before imaging with RIS, and troubleshooting problems with hardware. This is especially useful now that PC manufacturers have stopped including floppy drives with some of their new systems.

Step One: Install / Configure RIS- Sure, this is easier said than done, but the complete config of RIS under 2000 server or Server 2003 is beyond the scope of this howto. If you haven't done so already, you owe it to yourself (and your poor, overworked CD-ROM drives) to install RIS on at least one server. I suppose that if you weren't at least interested in RIS, you wouldn't even be perusing this forum.

Step Two: Convert Floppies- There are a couple of methods you can use to create images of your floppies. Using WinImage, or using the 'dd' command in Linux (I'm sure there are others, but these two work for me). The WinImage process is pretty self-explanatory, just capture an image of the 3.5" floppy disk and save as an image file. The file extension should be .ima, which you can change to .img or .bin if you like, just don't use .imz, that is a compressed image file and it wont work. Using DD under Linux, use the command: dd if=/dev/fd0 of=filename.img. Using either method, you'll end up with a file that's 1,440KB in windows explorer. Create this path on your RIS server: \\RISServer\REMINST\Setup\English\Tools\risme. Copy the newly created floppy image files to the risme folder you just created.

Step Three: Get RISME- Get RIS Menu Editor here then add a menu item from the "Maintenance and Troubleshooting" tab. Choose "Single Menu and Image File", click next. Type in a friendly name and help text for the menu item and click next. Point Risme to the floppy image you just created and put in the \\RISServer\REMINST\Setup\English\Tools\risme folder and click finish.

Step Four: Take it for a spin- Stop and restart the BINL service on the RIS server. Go to any PXE-capable client and try booting to the Client Installation Wizard. After entering your credentials, go to the "Maintenance and Troubleshooting" menu item and hit enter. You should see your friendly description there, and after hitting enter, should be booting to your floppy image (but much, MUCH quicker than an actual floppy).

That's it, hopefully this helps some folks out, and isn't already old news. Peace out.

Stuff

Edited by stuffman
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