kingswood Posted July 25, 2005 Posted July 25, 2005 Hey. Have you tried a "Remote Boot" floppy? Having said that, if you can initially put an RIS image onto your machine, the suggestion Ric_ gave is the best option. If you can't get an RIS image onto your machine, you might want to try a remote boot floppy (though this is pretty limited in the cards it supports). Good luck- we recently bought some Acer laptops to replace some that were stolen, and can't get rid *at all* of the partitions on it!! Paul
Inox Posted July 25, 2005 Posted July 25, 2005 Hey. Have you tried a "Remote Boot" floppy? Having said that, if you can initially put an RIS image onto your machine, the suggestion Ric_ gave is the best option. If you can't get an RIS image onto your machine, you might want to try a remote boot floppy (though this is pretty limited in the cards it supports). Good luck- we recently bought some Acer laptops to replace some that were stolen, and can't get rid *at all* of the partitions on it!! PaulThe remote boot floppy doesn't support Broadcom cards at all m8, and the laptop's dont come with floppy drives ;-p Got them working now, once I know how I did it i'll post a fix on here as the above MS guide didn't work, nor did 10+ other guides. How do you mean u can't get rid of the other partitions ? Which partitions? The ones we have come with EISA partition, c: and d: I have reformatted the laptop and merged the c and d partitions and have left the EISA partition alone. If u need help lemmi know.
kingswood Posted July 25, 2005 Posted July 25, 2005 Glad you got them working! I didn't think remote boot floppies would help (I knew they didn't come with floppy drives but figured you would have an external USB floppy device handy- that's what we do with systems without them). Our upper site (where we use the laptops) is a managed solution, so for various reasons we can't tamper too much with the machines. But I can tell you that diskpart and partition magic, a call to Acer support, and a second call to our support provider turned up nothing! What happens is that the machines come with three partitions (one hidden), and when these are wiped on reboot they are magically there again! Ghost has a hell of a time trying to make sense of it all, and even when we get the Ghost image onto them, when we reboot the system hangs at "no operating system" or similar (even after setting the partition as active). I even tried recovery console and things like "fixmbr", to no avail. If you do have any ideas, I'm all ears! :oops: Paul
RobC Posted July 25, 2005 Posted July 25, 2005 Kingswood, have you tried fdisking the laptops? Or the other alternative is Gdisk that comes with ghost. I haven't actually used Gdisk myself, but AFAIK it can deal with any hidden partitions on the disk.
kingswood Posted July 25, 2005 Posted July 25, 2005 Hi RobC. Actually I have tried FDISK, but I haven't looked at GDISK. That's a good point. I will try that one when I go back in. Thanks for the heads up! Paul
Ric_ Posted July 26, 2005 Posted July 26, 2005 I used Gdisk a couple of times and you can proper blitz a disk with it!
Inox Posted July 26, 2005 Posted July 26, 2005 kingwood, it may be that u have some software installed on the laptops (being a managed solution n all that) which automatically replaces anything that has changed since the image was made and locked. I have trial'd a few of these myself and the symptoms sound similar. Do you have a complete list of the software thats on them? All I have done to get rid of partition's is put in my Win XP CD (volume licence copy) and when it asks me where to install windows I deleted the c and d drives so I had a load of unpartition'd space and the EISA partition and then told windows to install into the unpartition'd space. It created a single drive that filled this space and installed windows to it. Now I have an EISA partition and a C partition and thats it. I have used both ghost and RIS and they both work fine.
kingswood Posted July 26, 2005 Posted July 26, 2005 No problem Inox- I'm thinking that GDISK will probably work. We actually have *no* managed software on the laptops at present- they are factory installed and we've only unpacked one of them to try the ghost image we have already got. Using the XP disk method you mention (AFAIK) utilises Diskpart, and during the XP install this is indeed a workable method. The OS boots in etc., and we find only one partition in "My Computer". When we boot using Ghost though (so that we can place a ghost image on the machine), the three partitions are back again! And so it goes on. Thanks for your help in any case- much appreciated. Paul
ChrisH Posted September 12, 2005 Posted September 12, 2005 Im just playing with RIS at the moment and I have set it up just to do the base install so far with the added NIC driver. Problem is that it doesnt seem to be joining the domain. The computer is managed and receives the it's hostname correctly but just sits in the workgroup. I tried adding ghe lines I usually add to join the domain in a sysprep setup but that doesnt do much either. Any ideas?
kingswood Posted September 12, 2005 Posted September 12, 2005 Hi ChrisH. When you say that your computer is "managed", do you mean that you have prestaged it within AD? Would you mind posting a copy of your RISETUP file so that we can have a look? Even if the machine hasn't picked up this information via your setup file, you should be able to join the domain manually by the usual method. I mean- (silly question I know)- have you checked your IP address and NIC driver status etc? Hope it works out for you! Paul
mac_shinobi Posted September 12, 2005 Posted September 12, 2005 prolly a stupid Q but where do you get gdisk from ?
Dos_Box Posted September 12, 2005 Author Posted September 12, 2005 I have never had any success getting a client pc to join off the base image with scripts, but if you create a new image and ripprep it then use the script I posted at the beginning of this topic to replace the generic one in the templates folder of the new image it will work just fine. Don't ask me why but base images are just set in stone. I suppose it is so you acn use them agin and again for various purposes and configurations, ripprepping any each time. P.S. Sysprep syntax does not work with RIS. Try using the automatic config scripting kit from the XP disk support tools folder to create customised RIS .SIF files for you.
Ric_ Posted September 12, 2005 Posted September 12, 2005 @Dos_Box: Technically you have had success with this since it works for me and you helped set up RIS!
Dos_Box Posted September 12, 2005 Author Posted September 12, 2005 I did! Wow. I thought I just setup the ripprepped images to be scripted?
ChrisH Posted September 13, 2005 Posted September 13, 2005 I could use netdom as a run once or something if its going to be a pain like you say but to do it the way intended would be good though ... @Kingswood It's definately ok on the network because its picking up the correct hostname. So for locking this down a bit what would user permsissions would the user need just join machines to the domain type permissions?
ajbritton Posted December 16, 2005 Posted December 16, 2005 I don't think anyone has mentioned the change in default behaviour of the SIS service on Win2K since SP3. SIS no longer 'grovels' the entire volume where RIS is installed, only the RemoteInstall folder and contents. This means you don't necessarily need to dedicate a partition to RIS. Unless of course you want to.
ICTNUT Posted January 21, 2006 Posted January 21, 2006 Hi All, We have just dumped Ghost for RIS however came across a problem, we could not use riprep as we have a wide flavour of PC's so we have put together the following: A base stock image (XPSP2) Depending on the installation type required (XPSP2, XPSP2 with Office, XPSP2 For ICT Room 12 apps in total etc.) we created a custom .sif file for each scenario Depending on the selection made RIS would run the relevant .sif file and within it we would have an entry for GUIRUNONCE which would execute a .cmd file which would then add entries into the registry under the RunOnceEX option. The steps that are followed by RIS are: 1 - Base install of XPSP2 2 - Once the base install was finished RunOnceEx registry entries are added and pc rebooted 3 - Upon restart the PC would auto login and run the RunOnceEx entries in order and install required software from a central install share. We have also used the following method to intergrate over 2500 drivers covering LAN, AUDIO, VGA, WLAN, CHIPSET into the base install so there is no longer a requirement to worry about drivers for the various flavours of PC we have. Friday, just gone, we RIS'd 60 PC's simultaniously, took 1hr 40mins and only 2 failed not bad I think. If anyone would like a copy of the scripts used to automate this process simply shout.....
kingswood Posted January 21, 2006 Posted January 21, 2006 RIPREP is great. Especially when you integrate driver folders and have one image that contains drivers for your hardware. Cool. But you can get away with Ghost on top of RIS which is actually pretty good too- giving you the flexibility of SYSPREP and the delight of being able to use PXE and grab your image from an RIS server. Even so, I'd like a copy of your scripts if you don't mind. I might be doing this over the summer so all help appreciated... Paul
kingswood Posted January 21, 2006 Posted January 21, 2006 I don't think anyone has mentioned the change in default behaviour of the SIS service on Win2K since SP3. SIS no longer 'grovels' the entire volume where RIS is installed, only the RemoteInstall folder and contents. This means you don't necessarily need to dedicate a partition to RIS. Unless of course you want to. Didn't actually know that- thanks for the info! Paul
ICTNUT Posted January 21, 2006 Posted January 21, 2006 @Kingswood: I Will Post up the scripts used on Monday for you as I do not have them with me at the moment.
ChrisH Posted January 21, 2006 Posted January 21, 2006 however came across a problem, we could not use riprep as we have a wide flavour of PC's I found similar things and odd behaviour even on the same type of hardware. If you want to see an example of these type of scripts look on the MSFN board at RogueSpears AutoRIS scripts. The auto ris script itself is great for preparing your source for driver integration like ICT Nut mentioned. I also have used Nlite to take out windows components that will never be used like obscure languages and keyboard mappings etc. I generally reduce the source by 150-200 meg. I also have most of the current updates integrated as well. I have started a RIS section on the WIKI but havent put any content on it yet so people go forth and add your 2p worth. I will start putting some stuff on myself today or tommorow as well.
tosca925 Posted January 22, 2006 Posted January 22, 2006 I'd like to know more about these scripts and also how to do it in a bit more indepth information if thats possible.
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