First I would do a test of RISing one machine at one time. Instead of doing a set. As you can image 500 machines at once I wouldn't recommand doing it in the real world.
My case senrio one machine at a time should always work.
As for the WINNT.SIF file be careful of this file. Make the WinNT.SIF file and save it after you made it to where you want it.
From my experience opening this file and/or moving / copying this file breaks the file.
Make it, save it, to where you want it and leave it alone from that point on.
I have created a CD called the AllState Common Enviornment CD 1.2 ACE 1.2 CD. What this CD is, is Windows XP Pro with SP2 slipstreamed with all the answer file / device drivers for our Dell's. This replaces the RIS server as we didn't have that great as luck as we wished.
Make a bootable Windows XP Pro SP2 CD and drop a WINNT.SIF file into the i386 folder. Once you done so you will have a Bootable Windows XP Pro SP2 CD just like you would RISing, but with a CD. Fail proof you just need a CD Rom. I will write more if you answer with questions.
All the machines that I have are able to boot from PXE. I have the RIS installed in my server and I have tried it, but somehow it changes the file extensions when it copies the i386 folder because the installation hangs at about 70% asking for files that are already in the folder and somehow the extension has been changed; like for exemple: (DLL to DL_ and stuff like that) when it searches for those files it can not find them, plus i have followed all the instruction placing the Winnt.INF file everywhere and I have not being able to make it work. I hate the RIS thing. Maybe I am doing something wrong, and by the way the CD use to extract the files from is an original XP_SP2.
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. I have a whole bunch of computers that I would like to upgrade with Windows XP Pro. I have tried a nice system I found on the internet called; DiegoStart. The system works until some extend. It is really oriented to client computers on a network and it is full of securities and features that I do not need for these machines. I have managed to take the best out of that system and tailored it to my needs. The above mentioned system uses BartPE to boot up the client machines. It is a very nice system and it offers nice options, but every time I start a new client machine I have to manually run the CMD, log on to my server, map the network drive and then run a little batch file I have created to start the whole process. I know you might be wondering; is there a question in all this? Well what I need is a simple system to log on to my server, mount the mapped drive and run my little batch file to start the installation. Unfortunately I don’t know if BartPE comes with a feature like “GuiRunOnce” that would solve my problems right there, but all I need is a boot system where I can create a batch file and do everything I described above without a keystroke. There are many boot system out there, but so far I haven’t found any that do what I need. Any suggestions will be highly appreciated! I hope you guys don’t get headaches reading this. Thank you so much in advance!
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