RIS Skips OSChooser Menu

  • Thread starter Thread starter GeekMK4000
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GeekMK4000

At my company we use RIS to deploy new builds to our contact center of
about 200 workstations. We use several different model HP workstations,
so we have different builds to reflect the slight variances in drivers
and configs.

The RIS platform is using Windows 2003 server with the hotfix from MS
Article 826358 applied (We had a problem with Intel Gig-Ethernet
adapters that needed this fix).

For our Training room we use our antiquated hardware that isn't quite
ready to be thrown in the dumpster. These are all non-AC'97 PXE
compliant systems, but they all do use the same network board (3com
3c905c-txm). We use a boot floppy from rom-o-matic.net to get them to
boot to the network and find the RIS server.

We made an image for our older models models and Riprep'ed them to the
RIS server. From any other workstation, the "Training-Room" build is
visible and appears to be good (however, due to different HAL's it
can't be loaded to another workstation).

My problem is this. All through the office RIS works fine and we can
see all the images, and push/pull imaged with no hassle. In the
training room, We are able to authenticate and log into the CIW, and
assign the workstation a computer name; but RIS will skip over the
OSChooser menu and always load a default WindowsXP SP-2 image without
ever prompting the user which image they want to load. We were able to
push our build up to the RIS server, but now we can't pull it or any
other image back down (with the exception of the default flat XP image)

It can't be a premissions problem if the same images are visible and
work on the newer machines.

Any ideas why RIS hates me so?
 
I almost don't want to answer this thread because it's BDU-related. I
had the pretty much same problem with 2003 server and Dell GX620.
AfterI created the image for the 620 I was a bit lazy and copied the
riprep.sif file from another image (since they looked so similar!) but
after a few hours of errorchecking I finally found out that the Halname
parameter under OSChooser section in the .sif-file was different!
Dammit. halmacpi.dll compared to halaacpi.dll.

This error made the RIS-installation skip the menu.
 
Win2003 RIS will only show you images that are compatible with the
workstation (that's what ours do, anyway). If the HAL on the workstation(s)
is not the same as the HAL used in the RIPREP images, then the only valid
image for the workstation is the flat CD image. And seeing that there is
only one valid image, RIS doesn't show you the OSCHOOSER screen as there is
nothing to choose.

Nick
 
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