RIS Boot Disk

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Does anyone know if there is an updated version of the RIS boot disk later than the one that came with server 2003 ?

Why do microsoft issue RIS and then never bother to update the available drivers for it ?

 

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I'm no RIS expert (tried it a few times without success!) but do you actually need to use the boot disk?

Most NIC's these days are PXE compliant, so you should be able to boot directly from the NIC and attach to the RIS server.

Am gona have to do some reading up on RIS methinks!

 

I think RIS is great fun to play with. If you are interested there is a ton of info relating to this topic here..

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/wssra/raguide/DeploymentServices/igdsbp_2.mspx?mfr=true

 

Nice link Blue,

I think the thing that sticks out in my mind about RIS is that . . . if the NIC isn't PXE reliant, then you have to hope your card is supported by RFBG.exe. If not, you are out of luck.

But . . . laptops cannot ever use RFBG.exe, as the NIC has to be of a PCI bus. So unless the Laptop is PXE compatable, you are out of luck. Same goes for NIC's using ISA. . .

 

the NICs are the tricky part when setting up RIS and then making sure all your required services are running properly... i got it up and running (1st time!!) with vmware - its one of the reason's why i bought it because it allows be to setup RIS without getting PXE cards!

 

Dont get me wrong i use RIS for pretty much all my installs at work and have also managed to add NIC drivers to the image for ones that are missing that are able to boot from PXE


Just that i have a machine with built in NIC and although it is PXE compatible it keeps saying that it can find the file needed to boot from the RIS server had this problem before but as i said managed to add the drivers

This board in question uses a SIS900 NIC but still cant get it working

My main gripe with RIS is Microsoft push this as a great way of doing your installs but then never think to update the list of drivers that the boot disk can use as this makes it easy for the ones that wont boot failing that they should make it possible for Admins to add there own NIC drivers to the boot disk with some custom option

The boot disk was last updated when Server 2003 came out !!!

end of rant

 

mojorisin,

Have you verified if the networking (routers, switches, hubs) between the computer to be RISsed and the RIS server is setup to be a DHCP relay? For example, with Cisco IOS, it's possible to configure a "helper" setting to forward DHCP requests. As you may or may not know, a DHCP request is sent to the broadcast address of 255.255.255.255. As you may recall, the purpose of a router is to block broadcasts outside of the sub/network. Is your DHCP server configured to issue IP configuration to a remote subnetwork?

 

I know RIS works because if i stick in a 3com card and use the boot disk it works its just a problem with this NIC on the motherboard


I fact it was taking so long to get going i just disabled the onboard nic and stuck the 3com in it and now it is installing fine

thanks for the input though

main grumble is with Microsoft not bothering or giving the option to update the boot disk rather than having to add drivers into the image and the like

cheers
mick

 

but if you say that this sis900 card is already pxe compliant, then it will probably never be included into rfbg.exe anyway, because the rfbg is only for certain clients that are not pxe compliant. so i don't see why you would need the rfbg to begin with, or why you are looking for an update.

anyway, you could look at third party (commercial) rfbg and pxe disks, at http://www.emboot.com/ and http://argontechnology.com/.