I received a new computer yesterday for the museum. So I decided RIS was the way to go for imaging the computer.  I have upgraded my RIS server to WDS and set it up in mixed mode. This was done some time back. I haven’t put Windows Vista as an image on it as we don’t really plan on upgrading to Vista corporately any time soon. We will probably upgrade to Vista when we roll out new computers in the next year or so. (Doesn’t mean my laptop won’t be upgraded sooner though). I went to put the standard Windows XP base image you make from the CD onto the new computer and it didn’t make it past the network boot, I got an error message about TFTP. Worked fine when RIS was there alone.

Did a search and found a good message thread going on in Microsoft Technet in their forums. The solution is to make sure you have a boot image on the WDS server. Meaning, on your WDS server, make sure you install a boot image from the Windows Vista DVD sources folder (boot.wim). Once that was added, I was able to access my legacy RIS images again. 

Figured I would pass this along in case anyone else sees  the same problem.

Alright, I got the server running WDS, unfortunately in Native mode. I wanted it running in Hybrid mode, which allows you to add RIS images along with WIM files, but from what I can tell, because I didn’t have any RIS images on the RIS server when I upgraded to WDS, it went into Native mode right off the bat. Oh well, this is just for testing anyway’s.

Adding images was easy. I started with the boot image first. Right click on boot images, click add image and add from the sources folder on the Vista DVD, boot.wim. Then right click install images, created a group, I called mine VistaInstall (not very original). Right clicked on the group and clicked added image. From the folder called sources, clicked on install.wim and it adds it in.

Right clicked on the server and went into the properties. Under PXE response I responded to all client computers. I changed Directory Services to the way I wanted it, on Advanced, I authorized the DHCP to respond. On DHCP tab, I needed to check both tabs as I am using the same server for DHCP as WDS. I didn’t change the options on any other tabs. I then brought up my workstation and booted it as a network boot, I pressed F12 when I needed too and off it went starting the Vista Install. I had to tell it the user I wanted, regional settings, but that was about it. A lot less questions to answer than Windows XP.

In case you are wondering, I am running all this on Virtual Server R2 SP1 Beta 2 (1.1.531.0 EE R2 SP1). Vista runs pretty decent with 512MB ram under Virtual Server. My next project will be to configure it, install what I want then put the image back up on the WDS server.

 

Todd

RIS has been replaced in Windows Longhorn and is now Windows Deployment Services. You can also install it on Windows 2003 Server where RIS is installed. You need a hotfix to install it. I spent some time looking for the hotfix, without much luck. Wasn’t looking hard but just in my spare time. I decided to focus a little bit on it today for an hour. What I found out was to get the hotfix you need to download the Windows Automated Installation Kit DVD image and the file is in the ISO. I downloaded the ISO, sure enough, there is the patch. I applied it to my existing RIS server and then upgraded the server to a Mixed mode server and that is where the server is at today. Nothing works right now, since I didn’t put a Windows Vista image but for now I just want to see if I can put up a Windows XP image. In my environment at the Court House, every computer is different, not one has the same hardware as another. Not a problem for Vista or Windows XP if I use BDD, but I want the images on the WDS server so what I plan to do is see if I can do a baremetal install of XP and WDS and be able to use it on other computers. I’ll keep you all advised.