OS Choices screen blank after renaming image folder

[myxiplx]

Ok, got a weird problem and can't find any answers on the internet.

I've got about 20 items in my RIS menu and I'm trying to tidy them up. I've found out that items are displayed in the order in which folders & files appear.

To get the order right, I'm renaming the original image folders as follows:

1. Windows 2000 Pro

2. Windows 2000 Server

3. Windows XP Pro

etc...

And within each folder, I'm renaming the .sif file like this:

1.1 Windows 2000 Pro (generic drivers)

1.2 Windows 2000 Pro (Dell Dimension 2400)

1.3 Windows 2000 Pro (Workshop PC)

This works well and the images appear in the correct order, but twice now I've renamed a folder and found that clients can no longer see any images at the OS Choices screen.

I don't get the usual "Unable to display OS choices" error, I just get the message "Use the arrow keys to select one of the following operating systems:", with nothing underneath, and the entire client installation wizard hangs.

This happened for a ghost folder called "x_Ghost_General". Renaming that to "5. Ghost General" caused the problem, renaming it back solved it.

A little later I was able to rename that same folder with no problems at all o_0.

Now I'm trying to rename my windows XP folder from "WINXP.PRO.SP1" to "3. WINXP.PRO.SP1". Every time I rename it clients hang and cannot see any images. As soon as I put the original name back clients are fine again.

I've tried restarting the BINL service, even rebooting the server (both before and after renaming the folder). Nothing seems to help except putting the name back, but I've renamed about 6 other folders with no problems (including ones that gave this problem in the past), and moved about 20 images to sub-folders with no problems.

Also, if I right-click on the server in Active Directory to manage the RIS installations, I can see all of them without any errors at all. It's purely the DOS client that's having the problem when I rename the folder. No errors are shown if I enable debugging for the BINL service either.

If anyone's seen this before or has any ideas please let me know. I've got all but 1 folder re-arranged now and this is driving me nuts.

thanks,

Ross

[myxiplx]

Ok, a few people have read this, but it doesn't look like anyone's come across it before.

There's got to be a reason why renaming folders causes problems sometimes but not others, but it may be a problem unique to my installation here.

Can someone try renaming a folder on their own RIS server and let me know here if it causes problems for your clients or not?

thanks,

Ross

[oioldman]

why rename the .sif file, and i didn't think you could use ( or ) in a file name.

Try just modifying the name within the .sif at the end under the description area, can't remember exact details.

[myxiplx]

Ok, all of a sudden today I'm able to rename that folder.

Nothing has changed on the server, I'm giving the folder the same name today as I tried earlier. The only thing I can possibly think is that something was cached somewhere meaning the server was trying to access the old locations.

Truly, truly bizarre.

PS. I wasn't actually using ( or ), they were just to illustrate what I wsa trying to do, sorry, that wasn't exactly clear.

I had to rename both the .sif file and the original folder to get the sort order to work. However it's working now, and my RIS menus are far neater.

Just modifying the name was the first thing I tried, but it doesn't sort in that way unfortunately. The ris server basically iterates through all folders and the sif files within them in alphabetical order, and displays entries in the order in which they're found.

To sort your menus you need to make sure your root folders appear alphabetically in the order you want, and ditto for the sif files within them.

Edited August 11, 2006 by myxiplx

[myxiplx]

Ok, got some more info to add to this thread.

1. Unable to rename folders, file in use

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I've found out that which folders are available for renaming and which are locked appears to be completely random. Sometimes I can rename all the folders, sometimes just one is locked. After a reboot I found 3 out of 6 were locked. By running sysinternal process explorer I found I could see which folders were being locked by the system, but am still no wiser as to why. I've resorted to either waiting or closing the handles manually to rename the folders, with no apparent ill effects to either approach.

2. Unable to format partition error when spaces used in RIS folder names

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I had eventually renamed all folders as explained above, adding numbers to the start of all the images in the form: "1. WinXP.PRO.SP2". Everything appeared to be working fine, my ghost boot images were working find and we'd installed several computers.

However when attempting a regular windows XP RIS install, the installation crashed at the end of the format process. It reaches 100% formatted, and then setup halts with the error:

"Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damamged."

We tracked this down to the use of a space in the RIS folder name. Removing that space solves this error. Our naming convention now uses the form "1.WinXP.PRO.SP2"

3. No OS choices being displayed after renaming folders

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Of course, following on from point 2, I need to rename all my folders again, and I'm now back with the original problem of the RIS client hanging at the OS choices screen, displaying a blank list of items.

I've managed to rename 5 out of 6 folders with no problems at all, but renaming the final one causes the client to hang with no choices listed. As with problem 1, the affected folder appears completely random. The first time I hit this problem it was a ghost folder I could not rename, this time it's the windows 2000 server folder.

This time around the ghost folder originally causing problems gave no trouble at all when I renamed it. I've no idea at all what causes this. Even rebooting the server doesn't allow me to rename a folder when it gets stuck like this.

Right now I'm stuck doing what I did before, which is trying that folder every so often and waiting until I get lucky and RIS decides to accept the new name.

On the positive side of things, I do have a workaround for all the problems now, but if anyone ever discovers why RIS behaves like this I'd love to know.

I've also found that there appears to be a limit to the number of RIS images you can present to the client. We're using 29 images now, when I attempted to add a 30th menu item, the client crashed with an error stating that too much data had been returned from the server.