WDS is driving me mad! XP client deployment problem

[cheredenine]

I boot into the deployment image i created, pick the image i want (I've only uploaded one so far) and then i get a message saying:

"could not display the images available for installation"

All the searching i've done so far this morning suggests mounting the boot.wim file with imagex and deleting the pid.txt file. Only the boot.wim file i have doesn't have this file... It came from a Dell restore disk originally; i've tried getting rid of the dell specific folder, but to no avail...

Please - any ideas? I don't want to be defeated by this over-complicated pile of nonsense!

[Quackers]

You will need the .wim file from the actual Vista DVD/CD(s)

I'm sure i read before Vista was released that they could lock say Dell Vista disks to just Dell for example using this new format.

You can get the Volume Licence of Vista for about £30, then £15 for the DVD.

[SYNACK]

Or even better use the boot.wim from a Server 2008 cd that way you can use multicast.

[cheredenine]

Cheers for the replies - i'm giving legacy mode a go at the moment, see if i can get it to behave with creating/deploying RIS images.

I can't help thinking the insistance on .wim files is a bit cynical - shouldn't need to spend £45 in order to use a tool that was once free and has been upgraded/crippled in favour of the newest OS version. Maybe i'm being unfair, but after spending most of today trying to get things running, i'm feeling less than charitable!

[SYNACK]

You can download the ISO for Windows 2008 free directly from Microsoft from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

It is a full DVD and has the files that you would need, you only need a product key if you are installing 2008 with it rather than just grabbing the files.

[cheredenine]

Thats.... rather handy! Thanks for that; i'll give it a go!

[Ste_Harve]

Or even better use the boot.wim from a Server 2008 cd that way you can use multicast.

And will that actually give multicast on a 2003 server or is that still only a 2008 feature? As I use WDS a lot for imaging, i'm debating whether to upgrade my imaging server to 2008, server is also a DC, DNS, DHCP. Any thoughts on it? We already have a 2008 DC up and running but server doesn't have hardware capacity to support imaging properly!!

[Quackers]

And will that actually give multicast on a 2003 server or is that still only a 2008 feature? As I use WDS a lot for imaging, i'm debating whether to upgrade my imaging server to 2008, server is also a DC, DNS, DHCP. Any thoughts on it? We already have a 2008 DC up and running but server doesn't have hardware capacity to support imaging properly!!

Multicast has to be from a Windows 2008 Server WDS, not a 2003, and if you run 2008 Server there is no legacy mode.

I went back to 2003 Server as the Multicast seemed a lot slower, even though i know in theory it should not be.

[Ste_Harve]

Thanks for that quackers. I know a few years ago using ghost in multicast was slow for me and that was down to the switch configuration. I'll have to have a look and see whether it's going to be worth taking a day to upgrade it and see what happens.

[Gatt]

Not been able to get multicast to work - I can set an image up in 2008's WDS as a Multicast Transmission (to wait till i start it manually) but the clients dont wait and go ahead an image anyway