Category Archives: Geek Central

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.

Create Bootable USB Stick

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The information about on this topic is rather scratchy, so here is the short steps to complete this.

This works under Windows Vista or Later. Although I have had success under Windows XP, I could not activate the active partition on the USB drive.

This uses the Diskpart command. Ensure that your usb key is the correct Disk id before continuing. This this example I assume the USB drive is Disk 1.

Start a CMD prompt then type

diskpart

Use list disk to display your different disks.

list disk

Then use the following commands to wipe the current usb key and set up a parition and make it active.

select disk 1
clean
create partition primary size=
select partition 1
active
format fs=NTFS
assign
exit
Note in this example I have set the format type to NTFS, if you wish a FAT or FAT32 drive then change the format accordingly.