[ckw2068]

Over the past few days I've read so much documentation, downloaded so many tools...and I've gotten so confused over the usage of PE. Perhaps I can explain a little about my environment, what we use to complete the job today, and see if PE is even an option.

I am currently installing Windows XP/2003 both 32 and 64-bit based on 300+ systems with a FAT16 and NTFS partition with RIS. The majority of the systems have Mass Storage Devices that are not support by Windows current releases. So I have to added the required entries to the sif file and place the drivers in the textmode folder. With as many different mass storage devices I have, you can only image how many different sif files, drivers packs, and folders I have to manage with RIS. Because of the Filesystem requirments the [RemoteInstall] and Autopartition lines cannot be used because Windows textmode would prepare the drive automatically.

So I decided to go back to CD-based installations. As we all know, CD installs are MUCH slower but I feel like there is less overhead by adding the drivers to txtsetup file directly. This is nice because there is no option for the system and the Mass Storage drivers can be used across multiple systems. Now my driver packs are very large and I still have not fixed the textmode drive preperation problem. My main concern is revision control.

I need a working process for both exisitng technologies and new (Vista).

Can you start an installation from PE for both 32 and 64 bit?
Would I need to add Mass storage Drivers to the PE builds like I do now for regular installs?
How would you solve my diskprep problem.



Just a little help please. I'm spent...

This post has been edited by ckw2068: 28 March 2006 - 09:26 AM

[Br4tt3]

Hi dude.

Yes you can launch a Win32/64 install from within WinPE (think only 2005 version supports 64-bit plattforms).
From the point of running winnt32.exe from within WinPE, you would control the Win32/64 using the normal unattend options (unattend.txt). Before running the actual installation, u could prepare the drives of the computers using diskpart.exe which is much more flexible than RIS disk options, where u can have several partitions and drives and so on...

To go back to the point where u say: I have so many models and masstorage devices that it sucks using RIS..

I just want to make you aware of the txtsetup.sif file method for adding drivers for SCSI / SATA / RAID controllers to your installation source so that you are not using the Microsoft method (where you point out one specific masstorage driver to boot from within the unattend.txt/winnt.sif) file and where u will eventually end up having several .sif's.

I support about 35 PC models and 8 server models, most of them with none supported SCSI/RAID/SATA controllers only using one 2 images (XP/Win2003) and one .sif file for each image with RIS.

But then again, WinPE is that way of the future..

[ckw2068]

Quote

I just want to make you aware of the txtsetup.sif file method for adding drivers for SCSI / SATA / RAID controllers to your installation source so that you are not using the Microsoft method (where you point out one specific masstorage driver to boot from within the unattend.txt/winnt.sif) file and where u will eventually end up having several .sif's.

Thanks for the reply on a somewhat winded Topic. I'm gonna do more research on PE and see about revamping how RIS is setup now. Have you messed around with WDS by chance? Thanks again Br4tt3.

This post has been edited by ckw2068: 29 March 2006 - 07:24 AM