WDS - Tips for beginners

[Ric_]

RIPREP is the technology you need to research... the RIPREP images can be converted to WIM images for WDS AFAIK. I would assume WDS has an equivalent tool to RIPREP.

[Geoff]

If you look at this page here:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Window....mspx?mfr=true

And scroll down to 'Creating Images'. The section that deals with the equivelent of RIPREP is the 'Install images' section.

[Uraken]

marvelous cheers chaps.this one is a good one as well http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...1-5192174.html

[ptuttle]

Help me out here...So I created a capture image and successfully uploaded a WINXP SP2 up to my WDS server. When attempting to add the newly created WIM file as a boot image, it gives me an error "The file does not contain a valid boot image". Any ideas? I used setupmgr to create a sysprep.inf file and I placed it into c:\sysprep. I'd really love to be able to deploy WinXP using WDS Native.

Thanks in advance.

[jaybot]

Hey, we have been setting up WDS at my work for only Windows XP as Vista isn't suitable for our network yet.
Just thought I'd put a few things in that I have learnt:

You can run wds in mixed mode or native mode - Mixed mode lets you use RIPREP images while migrating to wds. I dont know much about RIS as we have previously been using ghost with a sysprep image - moving on since the ghost license is expensive.

A boot Image is a winpe image -
You need the boot.wim from the Vista DVD to be able to access a menu of all suitable install images as it contains Setup.exe.

Install Images are images that have been sysprepped and captured using wdscapture.exe or imagex.exe from a winpe image.

wdscapture is like a gui for imagex that will let you capture and also upload a sysprepped image.

If an image doesn't show up in WDS on the client pc it is because the HAL doesn't match the computer - the setup program has a detection which was bad for us as we use a script to update the sysprep.inf so it changes the hal to the correct version - we overcame this by using an autounattend.xml file to force choosing the image and then running scripts after setup.

Longhorn - Deployment Technet Forum can be a good resource if you run into any problems.

WDS can be a bit confusing at first.

You will want to install WAIK for customising winpe wim files.

[Gatt]

We are having a few problems with WDS

1) RIPREP Images not converting to WIM files with following error:

Error occured while trying to execute command.
Error Code 0x80360051

2) Captured XP Images keep asking for VLK - even though its entered into the sysprep.inf file, also it doesn't pick up a PC Name even though its already in AD with a GUID.

3) Images fail with an error of 0x00000002 when created via BDD

Also, how do you get WDS to auto-format the HDD before deploying Images (Coverted RIPREP Images) as well as prompt for PC name & OU if not in AD (aka RIS Auto/Custom setup options)?

[jaybot]

I'm not sure about the riprep errors/Naming.

For the hard drive formatting this can be setup in an unattend.xml file.

[contink]

Just a quick nugget of intel for anyone trying to insert drivers into a legacy RIS style install as part of WDS..

You need to put the drivers in the i386 file and restart the WDS service and NOT follow the old procedure re: $OEM$/Drivers/Nic/ as this just doesn't work.

Hope that helps..

[Grommit]

... mmmmmm... Me thinks Ghost is a little simpler

[maniac]

Sorry to dig up this thread, has anyone got any ideas how to add a network driver to the windows PE environment?

I've sucessfully used WDS to image windows XP on a few types of machine, but I've one type of IBM machine that gives me an error 'can't communicate with the WDS server' whenever I boot it up in the image capturing mode. The only reason I can come up with is that it doesn't have the correct network drivers loaded.

I've trawled the net, but information is sketchy and not very clear when it is there.

Any help apprecicated

Cheers,

Mike.

[maniac]

More info on this problem. Worked out how to add network drivers, but still got the same error, never managed to solve it, so moved on to the next machine type.

Had the same problem with another type of IBM machine today, but one machine of the same type did work ok, very puzzling considering they should be identical machines. Anyway, started looking at this machine to find the differences between it and the others. Same network card, motherboard etc. Same BIOS versions, but I updated the BIOS anyway, no difference.

I Then noticed purely by chance the machine that worked has 512mb RAM, where as all the rest have 256mb. Added 256mb ram from another machine into one, and it worked!

So if you get a communications error while trying to image machines, check the amount of RAM in the machine. This problem only seems to affect IBM machines in my school (8098-72g is one of them)

Cheers,

Mike.

[ChrisH]

The problem will be realted to the Win PE needing 256 meg and im guessing you have shared graphics which will take you below the minimum.

[maniac]

I didn't realise it needed 256mb minimum! Strange thou, as we have a lot of fujitsu machines with only 256mb ram and shared graphics memory, and they all cope OK.

Why can't it just give me an error that tells me it's the memory that's the problem thou! Damned microsoft!

Mike.

[ChrisH]

That is the case with PE normally. I am assuming it si the case here although it may not be.

[PiqueABoo]

we have a lot of fujitsu machines with only 256mb ram and shared graphics memory

Perhaps they're set to share less memory. I've encountered 256MB boxes with the BIOS configured to use 64MB for graphics.