Good afternoon, it's my first day here and my first post - I have searched the forum, but don't see anything like my issue being mentioned...maybe I am just too n00b .

Here is what I am trying to accomplish:
I want to deploy Unattended installs of Windows XP using PXE and RIS (WDS) throughout my domain from different sites that require no user intervention outside of renaming the PC once it is up and running (will use dameware to do so) I want to use the Universal Imaging Utility to build the final image, so that it is hardware independant. All of my sites are connected via an internal network cloud.

Here is how I see it happening in my head:
End user boots into PXE by pressing F12,
PXE boots, user selects DEPLOY from the PXE menu
The master image deploys
The PC boots up and is prenamed and joined to the domain
The user logs on, and has the PC name and IP address (using BGINFO on the desktop), which he/she gives me
I dameware into the PC, rename it
After rebooting, I move the PC to the correct OU (can this be automated based on IP or something else?)

Here is what I have in place:
Windows 2003 AD, etc...
I have a Windows 2003 SP2 server running Windows Deployment Services (WDS), I have never had RIS installed, nor have I ever set up RIS. I pulled the boot files I needed for PXE to work from a Vista DVD. I built a master PC by installing windows XP from a CD, Office, configured the system to our standard, etc. My test desktop boots to PXE, and I can capture and deploy my master PC image to and from the WDS server.

What is missing:
I cannot figure out how to get the imaging to work unattended. Once Windows is deployed, it goes through the process of asking for the license key, etc... I have used the setup manager to create answer files, but cannot get them to work.

Any thoughts on what I am missing? I have read tons of documentation and some of the suggestions don't work for getting XP to deploy unattended.

Thanks,
Justin

You have a lot of work to do, for all of those things you mentioned. I think you should propably watch this little video tutorial about sysprepping first.

http://www.vernalex.com/guides/sysprep/video.shtml

When you have been able to make that "universal image", then you should continue to next step for developing the unattended image apply system.

Thanks for the reply. I pretty much have everything working EXCEPT the unattended part of the process...

any help on that would be appreciated.

This link will pretty much cover it; I followed this example for Sysprep and it works just fine.

http://academics.memphis.edu/aatech/Imagin...ated-042407.pdf

This is the link to download Sysprep for Windows XP SP2 (requires validation):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en

Where did you find documentation on setting up installation via PXE?

Thanks for the reply Tap52384, I'll check out the link and see if it helps. I got the directions for getting WDS PXE working from the WDS documentation that Microsoft provides. Basically, you install WDS and tell it to authorize itself in AD. There are some settings specific to installing WDS on the same machine as your DHCP server. Once you authorize it, it's done.


I'll look for and post the exact link if I can find it again...

Were you able to get UIU to work with WDS? I'm getting stuck when trying to redeploy a UIU image.

Thanks!

Ben in SC

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get it to work, but have sort of shelved the project in lui of more pressing items at the moment.

I contacted UIU today to make them aware of the problem. Zach said that they were looking into the problem to see if they could find a solution for us. This is only going to become bigger as more people move to WDS.

Ben in SC

I'm playing with WDS for winxp for a couple of days and this are my findings to make it unattended.
There are 3 major parts:

1) Unattend the WinPE so you don't need to choise your language and the partitions are made automaticly.
This is done via the WDSClientUnattend.xml file.

2) Unattend sysprep so Winxp doesn't start a Welcome setup. This incluce the winxp licence key...
My major error was that I used factory and then reseal in sysprep.
You should only use reseal with the option 'use mini-setup' on.

3) Specify a machinename and ou so the is joined to the domain.

I have 1 and 2 working. If wanted I can write something more about 1 & 2.

3 is in 'try & error' phase. I'm experimenting with 'notify admin for unknow client' but I'm getting strange things.
The client is showing up in my wsd console, I can give his a name (after I needed to solve a stupid access denied error)
and the computer account is made in the OU I specified in WDS.
But for some strange reason the clients now want a x64 boot image insteat of x32. If I uncheck 'notify admin' they take the x32...




Oh of course there was a 'zero phase' the get my optiplex 755 nic's working with the boot.wim.
The key there was to use the vista nic driver instead of the winxp. That alone took me couple of hourse to figure out...

Just a few questions:
1) Are all the machines the same model or will there be a variety of drivers?
2) Have you made an unattended install image?
3) Have you looked at the nLite software to help make the unattended image?

Woodsman707,
from what Ive read your are using a RIS setup image not a WDS WIM image. With XP RIS Setup images are the best to use as they are fresh installs so they are not restricted by HAL. Any image of an XP machine is limited on what machines it can go on due to the HAL.

Ive got around 10 different RIS Setup images so i can help you. I do recomend this [url=http://www.doitrightconsulting.net/forum/index.php]Forum[/img] if your using RIS it has some very useful resources & tools & can help you with your questions. Autoimage on this site can help you integrate drivers, & windows updats into your RIS images.

Here is one of my sif unattended files for you to copy & mod as necessary. I know this works. ive removed my paswords & license key but the rest remains in tacked.

i just started playing with WDS today since im considering sending the servers at work off to the retirement home and upgrading to 2008.

how do you get RIS images to work with WDS chiners? from what ive seen WDS only looks for *.wim images, and while playing around with it i thought the same thing as was mentioned earlier in this thread.. HALs are going to cause a headache. My network has about half of it on Fujitsu desktops, and then the other half is a mix of older Fujitsu Atx machines, and custom built grey boxes with allsorts of bloody hardware in them (legacy from previous employee)


what i read in the WDS help docs was basically a how-to for making snapshots/riprep images of machines, which wont work for my client machines since they are all blumin different... i need a universal image (or one slim one for the fujitsus and a fatter one for the rest)


howd i import an exisiting RIS image to WDS then?