Very Slow RIS Initialisation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ben
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B

Ben

Hi,

I'm running Windows 2003 Server R2 SP2. Uptil last week RIS/WDS was running
perfectly, I could build a machine in under 15 minutes from start to finish.
However today I'm trying to build a workstation, and the initialisation of
Windows setup has taken over an hour.
The machine boots into RIS fine, I can login, enter the machine name, and
select the image without problem. However, it is after the image selection,
bit before the hard disk partition process, that the problem occurs. The
initialisation of the Windows setup process, loading of the setup/kernel
drives, takes forever, after setup has initialised, and it moves onto the
partition/format of the hard disk, and copying of files, it speeds back up
to expected speed

Last week I setup a test ADS server, which I know may cause issues, however,
even when it was up and running I built a couple of RIS workstations, but
that has now been removed. I also added a Vista WinPE boot image to the
WDS/RIS configuration. Could this have caused a problem?

I've read a few KBs, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/906425 &
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929162/ but these seem to cover problems
when trying to deploy a WinPE image. In my case, its not the deployment of
WinPE that causing the problem, but a RIS image.

My server is a Dell Poweredge 2800, Dual P4 2.4ghz, 4gb Ram, single NIC.
Domain is Windows 2003 native. RIS is authorised in DHCP etc, all other
network services seem to be running without issue.

Can anyone suggest where the problem may lie or a fix?

Many thanks

Ben
 
ADS and RIS will fight for the PXE boot response (first one wins) if they
are on the same network segment. However that should not account for
slowness, just who will answer. Now if you installed those services on the
same server, who knows what trouble you will get :-). Adding a Vista WinPE
boot image to WDS is perfectly fine.
 
Hi Mike,

Thanks for the reply.

I installed ADS on a test server, which is now switched off, so it shouldn't
be interfering with RIS/WDS at all. Other than adding the WinPE , and
running ADS on the other server, there has been NO other changes to the
network or server, so I can't see any reason for RIS to be running so
slowly.

I may try uninstalling/re-installing WDS, and seeing if that fixes the
problem, hopefully it won't wipe out all my images!

Many thanks

Ben
 
I get something like this behavior when I make any modification to any RIS
image (CD or RIPREP doesn't matter), and then don't wait long enough after
restarting the WD service (or RIS service if still SP1) or don't restart the
service at all.

It appears that the WDS Legacy/RIS service seems to notice that something
has changed and rechecks/rebuilds all the PNF files. This only happens once
for every change and I don't think it is happening at the point in the
process you describe.

If you also have a RIS server still in the environment in addition to the
WDS server, you may be getting some other problems. I'm going to make an
entry on that shortly. The combination WDS (W2K3 SP2) with RIS (W2K3 SP1) is
apparently not a tested combination for Microsoft. (It is now for us!)
 
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