Adding drivers to RIS images without RIPrep (Windows XP and Windows 2000)

Submitted by Hannes Schmidt on Sat, 11/13/2004 - 17:30.

25.07.2006: Fixed typos (RIPrep and RISetup confusion in section Putting a driver into a RIS image).

The other day, a new machine arrived at the office. Although it was a fast and sexy Dell Optiplex SX280, I dreaded going through the setup and installation procedure; maybe because I live in a dream world. In my personal administrators’ dream world, when a new desktop computer arrives the hardest task is trying to get your signature right on that funny brown handheld computer that the UPS dude hands you after dropping the box. That’s because in my dream world I use a fleet of tools and technologies that MS refers to as IntelliMirror. In a nutshell, IntelliMirror equals RIS plus AD plus Windows Installer. I won't tell you all the gory details about these; rather, for the remainder of this article I'll assume that you have used RIS before.

Back to my dream. Up until the arrival of the new Optiplex, all of our machines were mostly identical. Consequently, one RIS image was enough to cover them all. Whenever some user messed up the machine, I simply rebooted the machine into PXE and reinstalled the RIS image from the server. The RIS image only contains the OS and the necessary drivers. All other software is repackaged into Windows Installer packages (MSI) that are deployed through group policies (GPO) in Active Directory. The whole process is unattended and after thirty minutes the machine is clean and ready to be used again.

Some of the machines have slightly different hardware. A second video card, a parallel port extension, stuff like that. In a perfect dream world, how do you deal with these minor differences in hardware? You can have multiple RIS images (one per hardware setup) but managing multiple RIS images is tedious. You could try to incorporate all drivers for all the different hardware setups in one image but some drivers don’t coexist peacefully on one machine. Furthermore, for both of these methods you’d have to install the image, install the driver and then run RipREP to create an updated image. Alternatively, you could try to deploy the drivers using Windows Installer by “snapshooting” the driver installation as you would do with conventional application software installations. This approach looks very promising because you can assign drivers to individual machines and updating to a new driver version is also a lot easier. Unfortunately, the snapshot method for creating MSIs doesn’t really work for drivers. This is because the driver installer and Windows itself change registry keys that are not covered by the snapshot program. In the past I tried all of these methods with varying success. If one method didn’t work I tried the next until I found something that worked. What a mess!

To make matters worse, the new Dell machine had a network card (NIC) that wasn’t supported by the text mode RIS setup a.k.a. Preinstall Environment. When booting into PXE, I would get the message “The network server does not support booting Windows 2000. Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.” It didn’t help putting the driver into the image because the text mode setup runs before the image is copied to the machine. Since my RIS images are located on a domain controller, I had to somehow get the driver into the RIS image and the text mode RIS setup. MS provides information on how to do that in a Knowledge Base article [1]. I would like to reformulate the procedure here because the KB article is somewhat vague and ambiguous.

Putting a driver into text mode RIS setup

This procedure is only necessary for the hardware drivers that are required for text mode RIS setup: network card drivers (if your images are located on a RIS server) and storage drivers. For all other drivers there is an easier way of deployment but more on that later on.

Ingredients: Raw driver, RIS image and text editor. By raw driver I mean the .INF-file and the accompanying files, usually .SYS files and .CAT files. If the driver is in a ZIP file or a self-extracting archive you’ll have to unpack it. Some driver packages contain drivers in various languages and for various platforms, i.e. XP, Win2000, NT and so on. Pick the right architecture for your RIS image. If you find an .INF file in a directory, you need all the files in that directory.

  1. On the RIS server, you should have a share called REMINST that contains the RIS images created through RIPrep and the CD based image (RISetup image). The RISetup image was created when you installed RIS on your server. Connect to the REMINST share. Assuming that your server is called SERVER, the RIPrep and RISetup images are in \\SERVER\\REMINST\Setup\Language\Images. Let’s say the RISetup image is called RISetup and the RIPrep is called RIPPrep.
  2. Create a directory called $oem$ in \\SERVER\\REMINST\Setup\Language\Images\RISetup. In $oem$ create another directory called $1.  In $1 create the directory Drivers.
  3. In Drivers create a directory using a name no longer than 8 characters that describes the hardware for which you are installing the driver; for example, Broadcom. You end up with the empty destination directory \\SERVER\\REMINST\Setup\Language\Images\RISetup\$oem$\$1\Drivers\Broadcom.
  4. Copy the raw driver into that directory. The drivers that I came across all had a flat layout (everything in one directory) but if the source directory that contains the INF file has sub-directories, MS suggests that you create these sub-directories in the destination directory as well.
  5. Copy the INF and SYS files into \\SERVER\\REMINST\Setup\Language\Images\RISetup\i386.
  6. In \\SERVER\\REMINST\Setup\Language\Images\RISetup\i386 and its subdirectories, search for a file called Ristndrd.sif. It’s usually located directly in i386 but MS says it’s in i386\templates. Add or update the following statements to the [Unattended] section
    DriverSigningPolicy = Ignore
    OemPreinstall = yes
    OemPnpDriversPath = Drivers\Broadcom

    Make sure there is only one line starting with OemPreinstall. For example, my SIF file already had OemPreinstall = no. In this case do not add a second one, but change the no into yes.  The same applies to the other two statements.

  7. Repeat steps the steps 3 to 6 for every driver you want included in text mode setup. Separate the entries in OemPnpDriversPath by a semicolon.
    OemPnpDriversPath = Drivers\Broadcom;Drivers\Hamster
  8. On the RIS server, restart the BINL service by launching cmd.exe and typing
    net stop binlsvc
    net start binlsvc

If you install this image onto one of your workstations, you will notice that the text mode RIS setup (a.k.a. pre-install environment) doesn’t complain anymore and dutifully copies the images onto the workstations hard disk. But when the machine reboots into graphics mode, it will not install the driver, leading to all sorts of trouble. For example, if the driver was for a network card, the system wouldn’t join the domain. What happened?

In the above mentioned KB article, MS says NOTE: If the RIS image was created with RIPREP, you must perform these steps on both the RIPREP image and the RISETUP image that corresponds to the RIPREP image.” Hmmh, these steps? Which steps? All of them? And how else can you create a RIS image, other than with RIPPrep? No matter how I interpreted this ambiguous sentence and whatever I tried, the driver would not be installed on the computer. There is a similar KB article on the same subject which explains things a bit differently to some extent, but that article didn’t help either. In some way that actually makes sense, because if I want a driver to be installed on a workstation, it should be included in the RIS image and not just the text mode setup.

Putting a driver into a RIS image

Through dumb luck I happened to stumble upon a third KB article [3] in which MS describes how to fix a bug in SYSPREP. The bug causes multiple identical entries to be added to DevicePath. What is DevicePath? It’s a registry value that contains a list of paths in which Windows searches for drivers when it detects new PNP hardware. Windows automatically performs an unattended installation of any suitable driver it finds. The default value for DevicePath is “%SystemRoot%\inf” and to be precise, it’s a list of locations in which Windows looks for INF files. The INF files then tell Windows where to look for the real driver files (SYS and CAT and the like).

Why don’t we just copy the raw driver files into a directory that’s part of the image and then update the DevicePath accordingly? As the driver directory belongs to the image, it will be copied to the machine’s harddisk. When the machine reboots after the image was installed, Windows should (re-)detect PNP hardware it doesn’t have a driver for and look up possible driver locations from DevicePath. This time Windows will find our driver and install it. Bingo! It’s kind of like pre-staging the driver by copying the driver files onto the target machine and telling it where to find the driver in case the hardware for it is detected. How do you do this?

  1. Create the directory \\SERVER\\REMINST\Setup\Language\Images\RIPrep\i386\Mirror1\UserData\Drivers\Broadcom. Remember that RIPrep stands for the name of your image and Broadcom signifies your hardware. These names are just examples and you will need to adjust them to your requirements.
  2. Copy the driver files into the newly created directory.
  3. On the server or your personal workstation, fire up regedt32 if it’s Windows 2000 or regedit if it’s an XP machine. (My personal workstation has Windows XP on it and so I use regedit.)
  4. Load the Software registry hive that’s part of the image by selecting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and choosing Load Hive on the File menu. Navigate to \\SERVER\REMINST\Setup\Language\Images\RIPrep\i386
    \Mirror1\UserData\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG
    and pick the Software file.
  5. Type RIS Image as the temporary name of the hive.
  6. In the registry tree, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\RIS Image\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion and in the right pane double click the DevicePath value.
  7. Append ;%SystemDrive%\Drivers\Broadcom to the value.
  8. Unload the hive by navigating to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\RIS Image and selecting Unload Hive on the File menu. Don’t forget this step because otherwise the hive will not be saved until you reboot your personal workstation.
  9. Install the RIS image on a test machine.
  10. Enjoy.

Pre-staging the driver is also much cleaner and safer solution. The old-school way of deploying drivers using RIS required downloading an image onto a computer, installing the driver by hand and uploading the image back to the server using RIPPrep. Installing the image on another machine that doesn’t have the hardware for this particular driver can cause all sorts of conflicts. The more drivers you are trying to deploy that way, the more likely you will run into trouble. Pre-staging the driver is different in that the driver files reside on the machine but the driver will only be installed and active if the right hardware is available.

As always in information technology, there will be a situation in which even this gentler, softer way of installing drivers doesn’t work. And this wouldn’t be a Diary Products article if I hadn’t run into such a situation myself. But don’t worry, my perfect dream world is not going to turn into a nightmare. More on that in another article, but to give you a sneak preview, I’ll tell you this: the new Optiplex system comes with drivers that require Windows 2000 SP4. All of my RIS images are SP2-based and I deploy SP4 using an SP4 using a Windows Installer Package (MSI) that is assigned to my workstations through a GPO. Right after the image is installed, it will boot into an SP2 Windows and then try to install the pre-staged SP4 drivers and crash. Stay tuned.

References:

[1] How to Add Third-Party OEM Network Adapters to RIS Installations: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/246184

[2] How to Add a Third-Party OEM Network Adapter to an RIS Installation: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315279

[3] OemPnpDriversPath appears multiple times in DevicePath http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285948/EN-US/

( categories: Windows | Administrator )
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 01:03.
Hi i have build a RIS Server on windopws server2003 SP1 and then i make three images on this RIS server. their name are XP, DMV and Etabs. XP is the RIS based image and other two are RIPrep based images. now when i try to install DMV or Etabs images from client i received an error Line 18 of INF file tmp\00E38B078101DD11A15DF811DE45D061.sif is invalid. Setup cannot continue, press any key to continue. although i am able to install simple XP image on client machines. Please help me.....
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 03/17/2008 - 04:47.
We also had problems with the text setup mode for HP DX2300 and as good as this guide is, and I learnt a lot from it, it did not solve our problem. Eventually I discovered that the txtsetup.sif file also needs editing, as described on this article.
Submitted by Hannes Schmidt on Thu, 02/28/2008 - 14:31.
You could create an OU in Active Directory with just that one computer account in it and add the GPO to that OU. Alternatively, you could add the GPO to the domain root and change the security settings of the GPO to only apply to that machine account (or group of machine accounts). That's what I did - I had a group for every model of computer in my domain and for each one of those I had a driver GPO with driver packages specific to that model. -- Hannes
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 02/28/2008 - 08:33.
It sounds like what you did worked great. My only concern would be how would the GPO know to install the drivers on the Dell 755 model instead of the Dell 745 model?
Submitted by Hannes Schmidt on Thu, 02/28/2008 - 00:23.
It's been a while since I have wrote this article but if memory serves right, I was in a similar situation. I think what I did was that I installed the video drivers as a software package in a GPO (group policy in Active Directory). I found this to be much easier than the method described here which is really only intended for NIC drivers. Once the network driver is installed correctly and the machine has joined the domain (which you say is where you're at) you can use a GPO to assign the rest of the driver packages, incl. video drivers. I think I intended to write an article about that, too, but never got around to it. The gist of it was that I used AdminStudio or WinInstall to create an MSI file with the Dell driver and a registry setting that pointed Windows to the driver location such that Windows would automatically detect it at the next reboot. I am not sure about the details but I can find out some more if you are interested. -- Hannes
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 02/27/2008 - 13:10.
I have a Dell Optiplex 755 model that is using a RIS restore process. If I can give you a brief background on my work here it would help. I originally ripped an image for a Dell 745 model that had a BROADCOM network chipset. I was told by my hardware vendor that the 745 and the 755 had no hardware differences. When I went to RIS this 745 image onto the 755 I had to go thru the process of adding the correct NIC drivers for the 755 model since it uses Intel. These along with the video did not install correctly, so I had to apply the Dell drivers for 755 and rip again. The RIS process worked fine on the 755 after that. Unfortunately, when I attempted to RIS the 745 with the BROADCOM NIC it would not install the NIC drivers and I could not get it to join the domain thru my SIF file settings. That is when I found your website and tried everything in there, but nothing worked. I finally had to RIS the drive in the 755 model, join the domain and the take the hdd and put it in the 745 model, install the 745 drivers and run a rip again to get the BROADCOM to work on the 745 and the Intel to work on the 755. From a NIC/Domain standpoint everything works fine. But I cannot get the Intel video drivers to install on the 755. I have created all the subfolders under the $oem$ folder, the i386 folder, on the folder structure under the mirror1 folder, changed the devicepath string and it still does not install. Is there anything that I may be missing? Thanks
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 12/19/2007 - 22:58.
Nvida Adapter not supported by RIS I installed the RIS in windows 2003 standard edition R2 RIS not supported the nvida Adapter for client machine.i am using the ris image as windows XP service pack 2 Any body help me in this
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/02/2007 - 03:01.

Really nice guide, thanks very much to Hannes for making it, this has saved us some time :) there is one issue though, this is in respect to the part that reads:

"MS says NOTE: If the RIS image was created with RIPREP, you must perform these steps on both the RIPREP image and the RISETUP image that corresponds to the RIPREP image"

This is indeeed true, basically we have some HP DX2300's whose NIC drivers are not recognised by the text mode part of the RIS setup. HP actually gave some instructions on how to use the drivers with RIS (which are basically the same as the ones given by Hannes) so we applied the instructions to the image we created via RIPRep and no joy, still didn't work. I then noticed that RIPRep seems to refer to a 'base' image, which was the initial image created with RISetup, so we then applied the changes to that image instead and all worked, we found out that we didnt even need the changes in the RIPRep image, they did no good.

Hope this helps people, caused us a couple of hours of confusion.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 08/24/2007 - 19:42.

The information were so useful and helpful every step was explained very clearly so if you have a little understanding what you doing you can understand it. It was so clear,however, I could not understand the Load Hive part in registry setting we dont have those file in Mirror1\UserData\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG and software file to open
we just created Mirror1\UserData\Drivers\name of driver folder
but any way it did work by installing those driver without doing registry setting step
cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you appreciated

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 08/24/2007 - 19:33.

Hi I have the same question that where are winnt\system32\config
when we just cread mirror1\userdata that what was explaing in article
I could not done that step but I complete all others so I skip it but it still worked for me. It did install all drivers which I mention in Mirror1\UserData\Drivers\name of your drivers folder
after finishing installation from ris I see that pc is already online by showing default msn page
I tried lot of others urls and they worked
I did not understand why we have to do load hive and all this why we have to bather registry settings
Thanks

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 08/23/2007 - 06:16.

Load the Software registry hive that’s part of the image by selecting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and choosing Load Hive on the File menu. Navigate to \\SERVER\REMINST\Setup\Language\Images\RIPrep\i386
\Mirror1\UserData\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG and pick the Software file.

I dont understand this, where is my .....\winnt\system32\config ??

i don't have this .. i only have what i created userdate\drivers\broadcom

can someone explain this to me pls

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 08/07/2007 - 12:47.

Thanks God Bless you!

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 06/05/2007 - 02:26.

Many thanks for providing the useful information. I could not follow what Microsoft was saying. It was so vague, but managed to get mine working using your instructions

Many thanks

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 06/01/2007 - 06:44.

%SystemDrive% is always going to be the drive letter of your windows startup volume. For example, if you have a machine whose boot drive is C: then %SystemDrive% will be C:. Therefore %SystemDrive%\Drivers\Broadcom = C:\Drivers\Broadcom

Thanks!

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 05/02/2007 - 05:34.

Also the service pack level (If your using 2003) has issues if you name your image directories too much alike the process no longer looks at the literal name of the directory. So if you have mutiple images Flat and riprep watch your naming structure. I had to add characters to get the directories to flow with the HAL and nic card configs.

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 04/18/2007 - 08:51.

Hello,

This is such a well explained article! i am facing the same problem and i shall check if this works tomorrow. If this works and my RIS server starts functioning, then its real party time and all the credit goes to this article!
I am using Windows 2003 Server SP1. I hope this method works with that also.

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/30/2006 - 13:40.

This is my problem as well. I modified my CD image on the server and I can do a stock load just fine, but once the image of the system that I RisPreped is uploaded to the server it doesn't function. I've add all the $oem$ stuff and the drivers just like it says here and on microsofts site. It still tells me it can't find the network adapter and stalls out my RisPreped install. Anybody figure this out.

Thanks
Eric

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/26/2006 - 03:04.

I couldn't agree more that the KB articles on this vague and misleading. Your guide sorted in 10 minutes what I'd spent the previous afternoon trying to get right.

With regards to the Ristndrd.sif, on my 2k3 server it was located in both i386\templates and directly in i386. The one that worked correctly when modified was the one directly in i386.

Many thanks,

Leon.

Submitted by Hannes Schmidt on Wed, 08/23/2006 - 23:52.

I guess I'm a little confused. If you can load the flat image, that must mean that 2k3 SP1 supports your hardware out-of-the-box or am I wrong? If your riprep image is based on 2k3 SP1 as well there should be no need to add drivers as described here, right? If your riprep image is pre-SP1 you will have to add SP1 to it the old-fashioned way, i.e. install image, install SP1, upload image back to RIS server using riprep.

-- Hannes

Submitted by groberg on Mon, 08/21/2006 - 04:59.

Good article, as many others have said. I have a Dell GX280 which I am trying to load a RIPREPed image of Windows Server 2003. I have the network stuff set up fine, but when trying to load the RIPREPed image with RIS I get the infamous message that "setup did not find any hard drives".

I can load the flat image (Server 2003, SP1) fine. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 07/19/2006 - 07:51.

Actually %SystemRoot% is c:\windows

%SystemDrive% is just c:\

: )

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 07/19/2006 - 05:33.

I've just completed this, and it works perfectly for dell broadcom drivers :-D. Correct "Putting a driver into text mode RIS setup" adds the driver to the initial setup image (the first driver error message that stop install). The second stage then adds the driver to the specific image for that install. I hope this clarifies think:-)

Thanks for all of the Help,
Tom

Submitted by subeljk on Tue, 07/11/2006 - 06:47.

Really excellent tutorial and hit.

There is just one typo mistake in RIS image section.
Check the path you put in the registry: ;%SystemDrive%\Drivers\Broadcom. That means c:\windows\drivers...
But path ...Mirror1\UserData\Drivers\Broadcom means c:\drivers\...

Once more, really nice hint

Kristijan

Submitted by Hannes Schmidt on Fri, 05/05/2006 - 15:03.

Hmm, I don't really understand what that "rename" script has to do with the topic of this article which is about adding drivers to RIS images. Besides, if you are using RIS properly you should install your RIS images via PXE or a network boot disk. In both cases you should prestage your workstations. That way you can easily assign a name to a GUID which is conceptually the same as a MAC address because it's a globally unique identifier for each computer.

-- Hannes

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 05/05/2006 - 03:53.

could you post your script with some information on how to use it? I've been looking for something like this.

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 05/04/2006 - 14:21.

One of the comments posted, said something about a script to automatically rename a computer based on MAC address. This is somethign that I have been considering, but have not yet had a chance to really look into it. Could you please post your script with an explanation?

Thanks.

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 03/22/2006 - 12:19.

I've just started playing with RIS - stuck at the geting extra drivers onto image bit - your article might be just what I need.

I've already got the scripts in place that will rename the workstation (based on a mac address to computer name table in a database) and move it to the correct OU in AD.

Once completed, all I have to do is boot in PXE mode, logon, select image and walk away.

Richie

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 01/04/2006 - 00:36.

I solved my problem with IBM 8215-29G (Intel PRO 1000) machines, by modifying e1000(blabla).inf files. You have to remove dot from any section name contianing INTEL (like [INTEL.x86blabla]). Beware of so called RIS inf files from Intel site, for me they didn't work.

My setup was Windows Server 2003 SP1 as RIS, XP SP2 as image. Didn't have to apply any MS hotfix.
I have to note that you have to put MODIFIED inf files only in i386, not in $OEM$/$1/Drivers/NIC.

That all the chemistry. Actually did the same trick successfullyon IBM 8183-DCG (Intel PRO 100VE) machines also.

regards

Joe

Submitted by Hannes Schmidt on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 09:30.

Re: RIS Installation

Willkommen auf Diary Products, Hans!

I'm not sure I understand correctly. Do you mean that it works even if you don't put the drivers into $OEM$? If that is the case, there isn't anything to worry about, I guess. It's a little strange but maybe your card emulates a legacy NIC for which text mode setup already has a built-in driver.

Let me know if I misunderstood your comment.

Grüße aus dem regnerischen Kalifornien in das bestimmt schöne verschneite Baiern!

Submitted by hans on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 08:55.

Hallo Hannes,

you described in the article about "Adding drivers to RIS images ..." that it is necessary to put the network adapter drivers not only into the i386 directory but also in the $OEM$\$1\Drivers\NIC.
Unfortunately it works on our system without putting the drivers in the $OEM$\... directory.
Has anyone an idea what´s wrong ?

hans
from bavaria

Submitted by Hannes Schmidt on Fri, 12/09/2005 - 12:24.

Did you see Intel® PRO/1000 GT Desktop Adapter Fails to Install Using Microsoft* RIS and the pages linked to from there?

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 12/09/2005 - 07:03.

Hannes,

first of all thank you for providing all that information on your page. It's really pathetic that MS isn't able to provide good documentation together with their products. (I was also very suprised by that and other sentences: "If the RIS image was created with RIPREP, you must perform these steps on both the RIPREP image and the RISETUP image that corresponds to the RIPREP image.”)

Unfortunally your manual has not worked out yet for my scenario:

I use a Windows 2003 Server (SP1) which serves a my RIS Server. I want to deploy Windows 2000 Professional clients equipped with Intel Pro/1000 GT Desktop Adapter.

I downloaded the latest Proset (10.1) and checked the nic's device-id in order to locate the right inf file (which was e1000325.inf; the device id is 107C). So I placed the files e1000325.inf, .cat, .sys into the $OEM$/$1/Drivers/NIC and the i386 folders. I modified the ristndrd.sif file, restarted "binlsvc" and got the following message. (Assuming that you are german I allow myself to post the error-message in german ;)...)

"Das von Ihnen gewählte Betriebssystem enthält keine erforderlichen Treiber für die Netzwerkkarte. Versuchen Sie ein anderes..blabla"

The only thing that changes is that the part where the installation process is collecting the system information takes much longer (like 2 or 3 minutes).

I read something about a parser error in W2K3, but also read that this should be fixed with SP1. In another forum I read about a fixed e1000325.inf file, but I wasn't able to locate that on Intel's page.

Any ideas?

Submitted by Hannes Schmidt on Mon, 10/24/2005 - 07:41.

I think that's what the "Putting a driver into text mode RIS setup" section of this article is about. Did it not work for you?

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 10/22/2005 - 10:21.

Has anyone been successful in applying a network card driver to a system that has been RIPPrep'ed? I'm not talking about adding the driver to the OS after it has been loaded, I'm talking about the first 3 seconds of the installation process.

The problem I'm having is that no matter what I do, I cannot get the windows 2000 setup to get past "The operating system image you selected does not contain the necessary drivers for your network card...". I've tried everything suggested here and in MS's articles.

Modifying a RisPrep image (one pulled from a CD, contains OS only) works like a charm, but a RipPrep image (existing OS with SW loaded, RIPPrepped to the RIS server) refuses to work. Any ideas? Did I miss something completely obvious, or am I trying to do something impossible?

Thanks!

Submitted by Hannes Schmidt on Sat, 10/08/2005 - 21:32.

Their method is different to the one described here because it involves creating a new RIS image by running riprep. My method modifies the image directly on the server. I didn't know about the article you mention, so your input is highly apreciated. Thank you.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 10/06/2005 - 00:42.

HI,
MS explains how to add a OEM driver to a RIS installation without RIPrep.

Check it, I think that is the same procedure that showed here:

How to Add OEM Plug and Play Drivers to Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314479

THanks, and regards.
Ariel Satanovsky

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 09/13/2005 - 17:48.

You can remove the step of having to move the computer to the correct container by changing a setting in the RIS tab on the properties of the RIS server.

Set it to create the computer account in the same container as the user who "installs" the RIS image onto the machine.

When you RIS a machine, use the account of the user who will be working at the machine to do the install rather that the administrator account or whtaever account you have been using in the past.

RIS will create the computer account in the users OU, which has the GPO linked to it to and thus the apps will be installed via GPO and you won't have to move the machine account.

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 09/07/2005 - 02:36.

This is an excellent article, and I'm glad I have found someone else who shares the same dream as I with regards to setting up and repairing PCs and their installations.

I have a question which I would like your input on:

When you set up your initial image using RIPREP, how do you stop Group Policy from installing your apps? I am assuming you dont have them installed in the initial image, but let GP install them after once the computer has joined the domain.

The problems I have been having are a combination of the driver issue you raise in this article, and when to install applications. I found an article (which I can no longer locate!) which said that if the exact same MSI file is installed from the same GPO in the image as where the PC will be located ultimately, that GP would detect they were the same and NOT install the applications again. I have found the opposite!

As soon as the image is installed, after a reboot or two to refresh the policy, it installs ALL the applications again, and they havent changed since I created the image. Ideally I would like to use the method you describe in your article - install the OS and drivers using RIS (and maybe clear up a few other standard settings or create shortcuts which is easy), then let the GPO install the applications like any other PC. I would also ideally like this to happen automatically, so I dont have to install the image, then move the PC into the correct container and force a policy refresh on the PC to install the apps.

The dream scenario is one where you boot through PXE, choose the image, and then walk away. When you come back, its got all the drivers, all the apps you want, ready for the user to log in.

Any further comment would be greatly appreciated.

Nic Elliott
UK