Monthly Archives: May 2009

Windows Deployment Server woes

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I have been configuring up some nice new Dell Optiplex 960 workstations. I use WDS under server 2003 and 2008 so I thought it would be a walk in the park…..

Problem 1

The first problem. Drivers are not included in the boot.wim image for the Intel Pro1000 Gigabit 825xx network card. Not a great problem in itself so a quick download of the network drivers from the Dell website and hey presto I have something to work with.

You need to ensure that you have the Windows Automated Install Kit (WAIK) installed. Now open up the command prompt through the WAIK program group.

Mount your boot image with ImageX. I would recommed setting up a couple of directories, so you can put the files in and then mount the image to.

I created a temp folder in the C drive. And a mount directory beneath it. I extracted the drivers into a folder called network beneath the temp folder.

Copy the boot.wim file to the temp folder. Then issue the following command:

imagex /mountrw c:\temp\boot.wim 2 c:\temp\mount

The number 2 is very important, it relates to the install image inside the boot.wim file. You can find out which images you have in a file by using imagex /info <wimfile>

Now you want to inject the drivers:

peimg /inf=c:\temp\network\*.inf /image=c:\temp\mount

This should complete successfully then all you need to do is commit the changes and unmount the wim image.

imagex /unmount /commit c:\temp\mount

You should now have your boot.wim file updated with new drivers. Insert this back into WDS using the console tools.

Problem 2

This one had my screaming at the machine for hours….

When the boot image loads it start Windows PE and gives you this error

WdsClient: An error occured while obtaining an IP Address from the DHCP Server

The only option is to hit OK, and thats the end.

The solution…..you might be interested in has nothing to do with the WDS server or the image file. It is actually the network switch. I have some very nice pretty shiney new Dell Powerconnect switches (62xx series), this is also a problem with Cisco switches. I messed about with some simply unmanaged switches and the problem goes away. So what is different??

Its called Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) portfast. You must enable this on the ports on your switch that you want to be able to network boot the machines on.

For the Dell Powerconnect 62xx series you need to log onto the switch in CLI mode and issue the following

at the Console> prompt

enable
configure
interface ethernet 1/g1
spanning-tree portfast

Where 1/g1 above that is the switch/port-type(number) 

I hope this helps.

Making an Xbox 360 connect to a Vista Media Centre PC on SBS 2008

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Well…….

……this has had me ripping my hair out and well i thought what the hell, i’ll post it here. Its not really something you will come across too often unless you have a modern forward thinking office (or high tech home).

The crux of the matter – How on earth do you make an Xbox 360 play nicely with a Vista Media Centre PC that is connected to a domain running Windows Small Business Server 2008?

Well, it is actually quite easy – when you know how.

The first step is to make sure that the Xbox can communicate with the Media Centre PC.

Fire up your Server console and start digging into Active Directory Users and Computers, expand the domain and drill through the organisational units until you get to:

<Domain> – MyBusinss – Computers – SBSComputers

In here you will see the AD account for your computer, drag that account into the SBSServers Unit.

Hey presto job done, your xbox can now see your media centre pc. If you want to speed up the group policy processing so it happens immediately don’t forget to run the following on your media centre pc:

gpupdate /force