Weird RIS Issue

[Richie1972]

I've now moved from Ghost to RIS installs and all is going well - no more images to worry about - just add drivers and go.

However, I've come across a strange problem that I guess must, somehow, be a network card issue.

We have different PCs throughout the school, but a few Dell Optiplex GX60's (not all of the GX60's, just some of them!) go through to the end of the install, but fail to join the domain. When you log on to the machine as local admin, it reports new software found and proceeds to install the network driver. After this you can then join the domain and all is almost ok....

We push out apps via GPO and these same machines try to install the apps every time they start up - even though they are already installed.

I'm replacing the network cards to see if that's the issue, as I've tried other versions of the driver (intel pro 100)

 

Anyone else had this issue?

[ChrisH]

I have had that issue and it was on a few random machines. I put it down to a network error at the time due to all that was goign on and started doing them in smaller numbers. We have since upgraded the infrastructure so I will see how i go this time.

[bossman]

Network card drivers are usually to blame specially intel i would advise buy realtek 8139 i have had no probs with this make of NIC. Intel have so many different variations on their drivers sends you mad in the end, i say it sends you mad in the end hehe

 

good luck

[ajbritton]

Watch out for IP address conflicts. Make sure your DHCP server is doing conflict testing before it hands out an address. Also, watch out for GUID conflicts. I don't recall ever having a GUID conflict on a Dell PC, but it could happen.

 

You could try examining the following logs on the PCs that don't build correctly. Setup logs.

 

In the build for your GX60, where are you placing the NIC PnP drivers?

[Richie1972]

I place the drivers in three places:

1. the I386 folder

2. $OEM$\$1\Drivers\GX60

3. $OEM$\textmode

 

As I've said, though, it works for some GX60 PCs, but not others.

It's probably not down to a network issue (I've had that once or twice when trying to install a lot of machines at once), as it seems to affect the same machines every time.

I've got some network cards on order, so I'll see if that improves the situation

[E1uSiV3]

I had that problem with a bunch of GX60s, it was the network card driver. Are you using Dells or Intels generic driver?

[Richie1972]

The Lan's are on board Intels.

I'm trying to find some alternative cards to put in, but so far I haven't managed to find any cheap cards with PXE support (the only ones I've seen haven't had the boot rom in.

Anywhere in the UK supply PXE lan cards cheaply?

[Richie1972]

I can't actually remember where I got the driver from now - I think it might be the Dell driver, but I can't be sure.

Do you know which driver will work for all the GX60's?

[E1uSiV3]

Pull the generic pro/100 driver off of intels website, its the one i used and everything worked great.

[ajbritton]

ditto. I RISed a room full of GX60s the other day using the latest Intel driver.

[Richie1972]

Looking on intel's website, there's a pro 100m, pro 100s pro 100v pro 100+...

Which one did you use for your GX60's?

[Richie1972]

Hmm, if I'd read the download info before replying I'd have found that one download does them all.....

Right, have updated the drivers, so will try it out later today

[ajbritton]

Intel seem to have sorted out their issue with duff .INF files as well.

[NetworkGeezer]

Watch out for IP address conflicts. Make sure your DHCP server is doing conflict testing before it hands out an address. Also, watch out for GUID conflicts. I don't recall ever having a GUID conflict on a Dell PC, but it could happen.

 

GUID conflicts. You mean GUIDS aren't unique to each as MAC addresses?

On the server side Windows normally catches attempts to create a computer account with a duplicate GUID.

[ajbritton]

The GUIDS assigned to the PC are supposed to be unique. Some PC suppliers 'forget' to assign GUIDs to the PC and PCs report similar GUIDS. When this happens, PCs will try to take over the computer accounts of PCs with the same GUID. There are utilities which will change the GUID to make it unique, but these are not that easy to get hold of. I've always had to go back to the supplier. I'm not sure how the duplicate GUID detection logic works, but I've had instances of PCs hijacking each others computer account with no warnings about duplicate GUIDs.

 

I configure my RIS server to assign computer names based on NP plus MAC (e.g. NP000080861892). When I build a PC for the first time, I try to remember the last 4 digits of the MAC which is displayed during the PXE boot phase, and compare it to the computer name which is assigned during the setup wizard just prior to the setup commencing. If the MACs don't match then something is wrong!

[Andi]

I'm getting the duplicate GUID issue with a certain batch of PCs. Everytime I try and rebuild them with RIS using the on board network card they come up with the same station name as each other. Same thing happens with a different network card, except it is a different station name.

 

Any clues on what on earth could be causing this?

[Geoff]

Your PC system builder sucks. Machine GUID's are set in the machines BIOS when they are constructed. However some manufacturers are unwilling or unable to set them. Leading to the problem you have now.

 

You might be able to download a bios update or a tool to manually set the GUID from they system builders website. But your lucky if you can.

[Andi]

Oh dear. I thought it might have been related to that. I have tried a BIOS update to the most recent version for that motherboard (Shuttle AV49N) but still the same issue.

 

I guess I'll try and find a tool to manually set the GUID, or buy a whole new set of motherboards.

 

Cheers Geoff.