Problem getting RIS working

[tarquel]

That's how long it's taken me to work this out!

 

lol fair enough

[OverWorked]

@ajbritton - I'd read your post, but didn't understand it at the time. I should have asked for clarification!

 

I was just trying to make clear the bit about DHCP being authorised, but not being installed, in case anyone else was struggling. It all adds to the font of knowledge that this place is.

 

I'm very pleased now I've got RIS working, I can use it to do lots of other things, like create a clean machine for MSI creation, fix corrupt OSs etc...

[ajbritton]

@ajbritton - I'd read your post, but didn't understand it at the time. I should have asked for clarification!

 

I was just trying to make clear the bit about DHCP being authorised, but not being installed, in case anyone else was struggling. It all adds to the font of knowledge that this place is.

 

I'm very pleased now I've got RIS working, I can use it to do lots of other things, like create a clean machine for MSI creation, fix corrupt OSs etc...

 

Sorry my post was not as clear as it should have been but glad that you've got it sussed now. I remember having to figure this out for myself and it was a nightmare. I ended up using a packet sniffer to work out what was going on. That said, I learnt quite a bit from that experience and I expect you did too!

 

Since you mention MSI creation, you might also consider using something like VMWare/Virtual PC, which can put your packaging PC back to a clean state in 0 (zero!) seconds using snapshots. I do this all the time (now using VMWare Server but I started out with Virtual PC). As long as you have a decent PC (I use P4 3.0GHz, 2Gb RAM), it's fine.

[OverWorked]

Since you mention MSI creation, you might also consider using something like VMWare/Virtual PC, which can put your packaging PC back to a clean state in 0 (zero!) seconds using snapshots.

 

Now, why didn't I think of that? As it happens, I've got my RIS server on a virtual machine (set up in an emergency after SP2 stuffed RIS on my real servers and wouldn't allow a way back - but that's another story).

 

Right now I'm building a virtual machine with a vanilla XP installation for creating MSI packages. It's installing with RIS, running on my other virtual machine!

 

I've been using virtual machines for a while now, but didn't think of using one for this. No more lugging a spare desktop from another room and waiting for it to reinstall - hurray! \\:D/

[tarquel]

I'm about to rollback to SP1 on my the DC because of WDS not working right - especially now I have got a machine or 7 to deploy XP to

 

Just cant get them to boot into RIS / WDS no matter what I try on the various machines, so unless anyone has any other ideas that messing around with DHCP [which I already tried], I'm gonna have to roll back and hope that works.

 

Nath.

[OverWorked]

I didn't try uninstalling SP2 as I thought it would just create more problems. I read in another thread here about WDS that uninstalling SP2 still didn't allow the reinstallation of RIS anyway.

 

My virtual RIS server is at SP1 and it's staying there!

 

I got into this predicament after upgrading to SP2 and thinking that WDS would offer advantages. Instead I just found a great big learning curve that I didn't have time, or immediate need, for. And no way back.

[tarquel]

I didn't try uninstalling SP2 as I thought it would just create more problems. I read in another thread here about WDS that uninstalling SP2 still didn't allow the reinstallation of RIS anyway.

 

Not sure what they meant - perhaps ripprep'ed images or whatever, but I've rolled back fine and have a client machine installing through RIS right now from one of my builds on RIS

 

[i'm going to set up a virtual server too though ]

 

Nath.