Snuffkins Posted August 21, 2006 Posted August 21, 2006 Right, i've made a floppy bootable rom image and when i boot off of it, it says it's loading the rom and then i get a grey screen with a flashing cursor... and it hangs there... I'm having a thick day ... I've selected the right chipset done, used rawrite to write it to the floppy disk and now i'm stuck again... Anything i could be doing wrong?
CyberNerd Posted August 21, 2006 Posted August 21, 2006 I've not encountered that error before. If you've used the wrong driver you should get this repeating: Probing PCI nic ... Probing ISA nic ... Maybe experiment with another network card to be sure. Also check the obvious - the RIS server is running and the network/DHCP is available.
Snuffkins Posted August 22, 2006 Posted August 22, 2006 I've been using the ris server for the rest of the machines so far without a problem so that's still definitely running ok and the machines that i can't get to connect are able to contact the dhcp server in windows so that sides ok... I've definitely got the right drivers for the cards... I don't know if i'm making the bootable floppy incorrectly though. Should it just be a case of picking the right card from the list on rom-o-matic and downloading the rom and using rawrite to write it to a floppy? I'll give it another go and see what happens... Cheers, Phill.
CyberNerd Posted August 22, 2006 Posted August 22, 2006 I don't know if i'm making the bootable floppy incorrectly though. Should it just be a case of picking the right card from the list on rom-o-matic and downloading the rom and using rawrite to write it to a floppy? sounds about right. I've not used rawrite for some time, but I don't recall encountering problems with it, could try using the cat command on a linux cd bootable distribution. There is some info on the help page http://rom-o-matic.net/5.4.2/nichelp.php
Snuffkins Posted September 1, 2006 Posted September 1, 2006 Ok so i thought i'd managed to get everything working ok, but now i've got these machines that have Intel Pro VE network cards and after adding the drivers to the image they boot into RIS fine. However, they don't show the list of builds that are there for some reason? I've even built one of them and riprepped it and they can't see the build of that either? Anyone got any idea whats wrong? They will all install by base copy of windows xp sp2 but they don't give me any option to choose anything else... Thanks, Phill...
MkII Posted September 1, 2006 Posted September 1, 2006 Doesn't RIS only show builds that are suitable for the client?
ajbritton Posted September 1, 2006 Posted September 1, 2006 Ok so i thought i'd managed to get everything working ok, but now i've got these machines that have Intel Pro VE network cards and after adding the drivers to the image they boot into RIS fine. However, they don't show the list of builds that are there for some reason? I've even built one of them and riprepped it and they can't see the build of that either? Anyone got any idea whats wrong? They will all install by base copy of windows xp sp2 but they don't give me any option to choose anything else... Thanks, Phill... Do the builds appear if you look at the properties on the computer account of your RIS server in AD? There's an extra tab 'Remote Install' on RIS server computer accounts which show this info.
Snuffkins Posted September 4, 2006 Posted September 4, 2006 All of the images are shown on the under the Images tab of the server settings...
Snuffkins Posted September 4, 2006 Posted September 4, 2006 I decided to riprep another image from one of the machines and strangely this one they can see. The first one they can't but this one they can... I'm not going to ask any questions i'm just glad it works ... And the day before the kids come back too, how usual ... lol... Thanks for all the help with this everyone... I think i can finally say everything works. Well apart from D-Link cards... lol...
Ric_ Posted September 4, 2006 Posted September 4, 2006 @Snuffkins: The file permission suggestion from ajbritton could be the answer. The new image will probably have fresh permissions on it. If you have inadvertantly changed the permissions on the others it may screw things up.
Snuffkins Posted September 5, 2006 Posted September 5, 2006 I had to say i thought everything was working didn't I??? lol... I've had a number of machines fail now repeatedly... They boot into RIS ok, appear to copy all the files from the selected build ok, they then restart... For some reason they boot off the network again, so i checked the BIOS, the HDD was the first bootable device and when i disable pxe boot i get and error on boot. Saying please use bootable device etc... They're identical machines to the others... I've had it happen on 7 machines but since then 3 decided that next time they would work... I've tried it on the others a few times with no luck and i'm not sure what could be causing it??? If anyone's got any idea's i'd appreciate it ... Many Thanks, Phill....
ajbritton Posted September 5, 2006 Posted September 5, 2006 @Snuffkins: Here's what I would try... 1 - Using RISETUP.EXE, create a completely new build from a volume license XP SP2 CD (don't use an nlite created build). Make sure you give the build a name with NO spaces in it eg GENERIC_XPSP2. 2 - If the NICs you are using are not built into XP, then add the .SYS and .INF from the NIC drive to the i386 folder created. This should be enough for the build to go ahead. Don't bother trying to integrate any other drivers, $oem$ files or messing with the .SIF. 3 - Restart the BINLSVC (Remote Installation Services) service. 4 - Try RIS building a PC. This will prove the mechanism is working. If it fails, then it sounds like a problem with your RIS infrastructure. If it works, then I suspect your other builds.
john Posted October 21, 2006 Posted October 21, 2006 I got a small RIS issue (which has huuuuuuuuge implications!) basically my RIS box is having a sulk. When i set it up I added the Broadcom card drivers in using the info from HPs softpaq and the MSFT KB details and it worked a treat, now these have not been touched or modified by any member of the IT team since then (near enough 1 year ago now) but over summer we started having a few issues with some machines failing to boot from it or hanging, but in the end we got them RIS'd. I put it down to the new HP machines being AMD and the rest of the computer system being Intel but basically its now got to the point every single Broadcom machine won't RIS! It flys to the blue screen where it loads the drivers for text part of setup then sits at Starting Windows Setup (the text at the bottom) then CRASH! its gone, and its going on about failing to boot from the network. When googling about it seems to be a common thing with added on drivers, so I thought I would just update them on my RIS box as that may help, but nope its made no difference, Broadcom have updated there drivers a few times since last summer, support more chips now in them, and removed some win 2K bits but still it won't boot them, I either get a b57W2K.sys file missing / code error on line 3788 (or some line like that) or it crashing with a BSOD. So any advice? Can I wipe the box and restore my 17 different machine images back to it as I really do not want to re-make them as its taken near enough a full year to build them and they are vital. I have run the RIS tool on it and it says its all OK and that its running fine, its authorised to be DHCP fine and everything else I can think of checking is fine so I am a bit stuck here! Any pointers (appart from the put 300 3Com / Intel / Realtek cards in my machines as that is not an option)
contink Posted November 30, 2006 Posted November 30, 2006 Working my way through RIS today but I've noticed a few bits and bobs along the way so doubtless I'll be posting as I go.. First thing I noticed.. The ryanvm site is now at: http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn (the link earlier in this thread is dead)
edie209 Posted November 30, 2006 Posted November 30, 2006 May I recomend you take a look at AutoImage over at http://www.doitrightconsulting.net RogueSpear has an application that really takes RISing forward. I have every machine on site now RISing it has taken a little while but has been well worth it. I have probably come across most of the gotchas so feel free to contact me if you need.
contink Posted November 30, 2006 Posted November 30, 2006 May I recomend you take a look at AutoImage over at http://www.doitrightconsulting.net RogueSpear has an application that really takes RISing forward. I have every machine on site now RISing it has taken a little while but has been well worth it. I have probably come across most of the gotchas so feel free to contact me if you need. As it goes I found that site along the way and decided to give it a go.. Aside from a missed step in the process (see here) I found it a very useful tool that helped me enormously.. The only trick I also learned along the way was that you really need the GUID before you start the RIS so that you don't have to add the PC to the domain manually... Probably something I've missed too but all in all I managed to do in a day what I'd assumed would require a lot of hair pulling and 5 days to achieve.
ajbritton Posted November 30, 2006 Posted November 30, 2006 The only trick I also learned along the way was that you really need the GUID before you start the RIS so that you don't have to add the PC to the domain manually You only need the GUID before the build if you want to prestage the computer account in a particular OU. If you don't do this, it should still be creating a computer account (by default it's in the Computers container) and putting the PC on the domain.
ChrisH Posted December 1, 2006 Posted December 1, 2006 I always change the default OU to the room OU if Im doing a few PCs in one room. I also use custom setup to give it a name first time .
pete Posted December 8, 2006 Posted December 8, 2006 Am I right in thinking that when you riprep a computer it copies everything back to the RIS server, even if there's a similar riprep image already there? (As opposed to say the 200MB difference that adding a few apps to an image might make). My RIS box would appear to do this. If this is the case, am I going to break things if I delete older riprep images? Or does the newer image not depend on the older images? This thread rocks btw.
ChrisH Posted December 8, 2006 Posted December 8, 2006 It installs the system from the CD image you used originally then it adds all the extra bits after. The groveller service is also supposed to eliminate duplicate files on your RIS partition and transparently links the same files to one copy (apparently).
john Posted December 8, 2006 Posted December 8, 2006 Yeah, I wish mine would grovel more, all my images are near enough full size still and some of them have been there for many months now, it must crawl slower than a baby does.
ajbritton Posted December 8, 2006 Posted December 8, 2006 John, are sure you are looking at the 'size on disk' figure....
pete Posted December 8, 2006 Posted December 8, 2006 @Chris I checked the used space before I left tonight and there did seem to be more free than this morning. Any idea how long* it should realistically take to separate out the 200-300 mb of changes from an 8GB image? * yeah, all relative. Assume decent-ish server under minimal load.
john Posted December 8, 2006 Posted December 8, 2006 @ajbritton, yeah I am sure I am, I will check though, it isn't a big worry, Its on a 120GB drive so plenty of room, its probably about half full and some of those can be junked now as the machines no longer exist.
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