RIS - workstations come with OEM OS

[jatkinson]

Can I still use RIS if the workstations we purchase come pre-installed with the vendor's flavour of the OS ?

I'm thinking we could create the image and then run it from a PXE boot or floppy boot before the vendors pre-installed software kicks in. Is this possible? Legal?

I'm fed up of having to run through an install routine for a group of machines that have exactly the same config so I thought RIS would be perfect here. I've worked through a few guides etc on setting up RIS images, slipstreaming SPs and the like and am pretty happy with settings those up but I'd appreciate any advice on your experiences.

Cheers

 

[WillShakespeare]

Yes, you can do this fine. See thread931-942427

The way I did it was to trash the vendor installed machine by booting to a WinXP with SP2 CD. During install I wiped all partitions (including the little Dell maintenance partition), and created one for the whole drive.
I then installed Ofiice and all the other software we have as standard on desktops.
Finally I ran RIPrep and this pushed the image to the server.
Finally, I could boot each new workstation to the server and the image was pushed onto them. Just had to enter the licence number and name, and a couple of other brief setup windows (I am currently working on getting rid of these for a complete unattended install), and voila! A fully installed workstation with standard desktop build in 10 Minutes!

Of course I had trouble with the drivers, but once sorted, this RIS thing works great!

Will

 

[jatkinson]

Thanks Will

That's good to know. I was also thinking of ways to get around entering the license number all the time. I had read somewhere a while back that it should be possible to set the name via Active Directory and the install should pick this up. I've no idea how to work around the entering of the license key though.

Cheers

 

[WillShakespeare]

Here's how you do the ProductID:

Windows IT Pro

You add CD-ROM keys to a RIS answer file as the ProductID value in the [UserData] section, as the following format shows (where x stands for the CD-ROM key integers):

[UserData]
ProductID = "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
-xxxxx-xxxxx"

The AD bit is easy, you just need the machine's GUID. I think this is printed on the screen during POST, but not sure. I'll find out and post later if you need it.

Will

 

[WillShakespeare]

LOL! Here is what MS says:

For example, you would type the following (including the dashes and quotation marks) into the [UserData] section of the .sif file:

ProductKey = "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx"

Note the difference! I'll try this one first, then ID if it doesn't work.

Will

 

[jatkinson]

So you can just add a large list of CD keys or could you just add the one?

 

[timsayles1]

This only works for a Corporate volume install.

 

[WillShakespeare]

hmmm... yes, that's true, didn't think of that. Are you saying that RIS only works for volume licensing, or just the ProductKey bit?

jatkinson, you may have to type the key in manually for each install, then. But to be honest, that's not too bad.

If you have lots of disk space, you might be able "copy" the image folder for each install you plan and then add the ProductKey value in each of the separate sif files. But that's not something I can say for sure as we have volume licensing. Even though the computers we buy come with XP already on them, we simply trash this install and "overwrite" with an image using one of the volume license keys we have.

Still, if you build an imgae from the first machine, and forget about the Product Key then you should be able to push to each machine, including all the standard software you need (Office, etc.) and when you boot to the new image, you only have to type in the Product key and a couple of small bits of information.

Sorry i couldn't be more helpful in that regard!

Will

 

[jatkinson]

I'm not that clued up on all the licensing variants. I assume that Volume Licensing is completely differetn to OLPs?

 

[WillShakespeare]

Essentially it means you have a "generic" Windows XP CD (in our case Windows XP with SP2 integrated), which you can install on any machine as long as you have a volume licence key.
OLP I think is quite similar. With Volume licencing, you can get shipped every piece of current software from Microsoft (we have about 500 CDs!), and then in order to use any of the software you must obtain (purchase) a volume licence key for that product.
With OLP, my understanding is that you get sent the specific software you ordered, and are assigned a number of keys. For example you might get 20 different keys for XP if you ordered 20 licences. However, if I remember correctly, with OLP you can use a single one of those keys for every machine installation, but you're not "supposed" to. However, if you get audited, as longa s you produce the full list of keys, I think you are safe. You might need to check on MS site for that.

If you have an OLP key, try to use it in the productKey part of the sif and see if it works. I reckon it will, but can't say for sure.

Will

 

[jatkinson]

Thanks Will

I'll investigate a bit further, we have always worked on principal that if we can display the correct no. of licenses/keys then we aren't too strict over which key we use to license the software, it's a nightmare otherwise.

I'll see what more I can find out but you've been a big help.

Cheers

 

[jatkinson]

Ok

I've beena playing around a bit on my test network and have so far been able to:

1. create a slipstreamed XP SP2 image and install that to the RIS server.
2. push out the image to a laptop using PXE/RIS
3. Install basics such as AV sotware, hotfixes since SP2 etc
4. Run RipRep to create an image back to the RIS Server.

I then got several issues I could do with some help on.

The first is that a RipRep finished it complained of the following files

startrom.com
ntdetect.com
ntldr
ristndrd.sif

The laptop then restarted and proceeded to go into a mini XP install sequence where I needed to set regional settings, admin password, machine name and domain details etc. The laptop then couldn't find the domain and after continuing to boot the local admin account was locked out. I got round this by rebooting into safe made with network support, logging in as local admin and then adding the laptop (with new name) to the domain again.

I still suspect the list of files above may have had something to do with this and my next problem which is that even though I can see the new folder in explorer for the riprep image I cannot see the image in AD via Remote Install>Advanced Settings>Images tab. Does this mean that RipRep didn't work properly? Is it something specifically to do with the ristndrd.sif file error reported at the end of the RipRep procedure?

When I'm happy I've got the basics sorted I'll move onto looking at the answer file / product key issue.

Many thanks again for your time and assistance

 

[jatkinson]

Out of interest, after having a look around the folders I noticed that the four files reported at the end of RipReping the laptop are located in the templates folder of the original RIS image

\\SERVERNAME\REMINST\Setup\English\Images\WXPSP2_Fujitsu\i386\templates

Must be a connection I guess?

 

[WillShakespeare]

hmmm... strange one that... after i fixed the network card problem on my end, RIS worked a treat.

These four files should indeed be in that location, as well as in the location of the new image you created after installing the extra apps. Can you tell me exactly the complaint you got from riprep?

Incidentally it's RiPrep, not RipRep... Remote Instalation Preparation. It's actually a "version" of the well known SysPrep utility.

Are you running riprep.exe directly from \\server\REMINST\Admin\i386 ? This may make a difference. This is how I did it. I clicked Start -> Run, then the above address which autocompleted each folder after I typed \\server\

I then opened the i386 folder and ran riprep.

Incidentally, we also had problems with the share disappearing, but this was mainly because we are using an external disk.

Will