WINDOWS 2000 PROFESSIONAL STUDY NOTES - Guide 2

 

AUTOMATING THE WINDOWS 2000 INSTALLATION

You can automate the Windows 2000 Professional installation in several ways:

 

Remote Installation Services (RIS)

A RIS server installs Windows 2000 Professional on RIS clients. The server must have RIS server software installed and configured. The RIS client computer must have a Pre-Boot Execution Environment (PXE ROM chip) network card installed.

RIS can also be performed by use of a RIS boot disk for PXE compatible cards. The boot disk can be created using the Remote Boot Floppy Generator (RBFG.exe), which can be obtained on a Windows 2000 Server PC. A RIS client begins the installation process by ROSA form he DHCP server.


Note: Remote installation is a good choice for automatic deployment when you need to be able to deploy large numbers of computers and clients are PXE compliant. The following network services must be running on a RIS server:


Note: In order for RIS to work, the computer acting as the RIS server must be a Windows 2000 domain controller or member server. Also, as part of the RIS installation, the following services are loaded on the RIS server:

RIS servers can be configured with either of two types of images:

 

An Overview of Disk Imaging

Disk imaging or disk duplicating is the process of creating a reference computer for the automated deployment. You use the System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) utility to prepare the disk image. You install Windows 2000 Professional on the source computer with the configuration you want to copy. Then you run Sysprep to prepare the disk image for disk duplication. Sysprep is located on the Windows 2000 Professional CD \Support\Tools folder, in the Deploy.cab file

Note: Disk imaging is a good choice for automatic deployment when you have the hardware that supports disk imaging (disk duplicators) and you have a large number of computers with similar configuration requirements.

 

An Overview of Unattended Installation

Unattended installations is a practical method of automatic deployment when you have a large number of clients to install and the computers are not PXE compliant. You still need to use a distribution server to install Windows 2000 Professional and on a target computer. The target computer needs to have enough software to allow it to connect to the distribution server.

 

Using Setup Manager to Create Answer Files

The Setup Manager is used to create Answer Files, they are automated installation scripts used to answer the questions that appear during a normal Windows 2000 Professional installation. Setup Manager in a nutshell:

Answer files can be used with all automatic installations, but are commonly used to easily deploy Windows 2000 Professional to computers that may not be configured in the same manner, with little or no user intervention. Answer files can be edited by using Note Pad or any other text editor.

The Setup Manager for creating answer files can be extracted from the Windows 2000 deployment tools section on the Windows 2000 Professional CD: \Support\Tools folder.


Types of answer files:


Options that can be configured through an answer file:

 

Adding Hardware

Mass Storage Devices - If device is recognized and supported by Windows 2000, you don't have o do anything. If it is not, you can configure the device through mass storage. Here are the steps:

  1. Find distribution folder (where remote image files are located)
  2. Locate folder \$OEM$
  3. Within this folder, create a folder called Textmode
  4. Copy your unsupported Windows 2000 drivers into the Textmode folder (will usually be *.inf, *.sys, *.dll and *.cat, also copy the Txtsetup.oem file)
  5. Open up your answer file and create a section called [MassStorageDrivers] the parameters will be provided by the Txtsetup.oem file, this should have been provided by the manufacturer of the device
  6. Within your answer file, create a section named [OEMBootFiles] it will include a list of all the driver files that are in the \$OEM$\ Textmode folder.

Plug and Play Devices

Plug and play devices that do not have drivers:

  1. Within \$OEM$\$1 subfolder create a folder called \$OEM$\$1\PnPdrivers\(specific device). You can also section this of by specific devices (i.e. Modems).
  2. In the answer file, edit the [Unattended] section to reflect the location of the drivers.

Note: If the drivers you are installing are not digitally signed, you need configure the driver-signing policy within the [Unattended] section of the answer file (DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore)

 

Hardware Abstraction Layers (HAL's)

To use a different HAL:

  1. Verify or create \$OEM$\Texmode folder exists
  2. Edit the [Unattended] section of the answer file with the manufactures HAL

 

Using Remote Installation Services

In order to use RIS you need a RIS server and client computers hat can access the RIS server. The advantages of RIS are as follows:


RIS process steps:

  1. RIS client initiates boot process using either PXE NIC or PXE Boot disk
  2. RIS client PC sends out a DHCP discovery packet, requesting an IP address and location (IP address) of the RIS sever
  3. If DHCP server and RIS the same (2 step process) if DHCP and RIS on different servers (3step process)
  4. RIS client contacts RIS server Boot Information Negotiation Layer (BINL)
  5. If RIS client is authorized by the RIS server, then BINL provides location and name of bootstrap image
  6. RIS client accesses bootstrap image via Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) and Windows 2000 client installation wizard is started
  7. RIS client is prompted for a user name and password
  8. Depending on users rights, user is presented with a menu of options.

 

Bootstrap Protocol (BootP) and RFC1542 Compliancy

This is associated with routers and whether or not they are 1542 compliant. It means that if a router is 1542 compliant, it will be cable o forwarding discover packets to other parts of the network. However, if the router is not 1542 compliant, there must be a DHCP Relay Agent running on every server of each network segment.