WDS Woes

ally_uk · June 2012

Hey guys having some issues with deployment, WDS is all setup and running fine, I am trying to inject drivers into the Vista Boot image (But this option is greyed out) which obviously is a pain in the ass because I need network drivers to start the install process.

I deleted the Vista Boot Image and decided to use a Windows 7 boot image, Added required drivers to the boot image and all was sweet booted WDS loaded the Win 7 boot image and selected the Vista image I required and wasn't prompted to install any lan drivers progress I thought

, Anyways towards the end of the install process I am greeted with a

error dialog saying "Windows could not update registry data in the installation." when deploying Windows Vista.

Further research shows that the Boot Image ( Windows 7) is to new for Vista, And I am told to use a older Boot image which leaves me scratching my head as I need somehow a way of injecting the LAN drivers into the boot image prefably a easy way DISM looks a bit scary any other options?

Vaga · June 2012

I very rarely post on here, despite lurking daily, however I've been running WDS on a 2003 server for quite a while now pushing out all of my win 7 images across the network, and serving up my server installs. No idea about sccm and mdt, I have always injected my drivers using dism, nothing at all scary about it.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure this stands for vista as well as win 7
How To Mount and Inject Drivers into Windows 7 PE 3.0 | Commodore.ca | Windows

Hope you manage to get sorted.

sthomas · June 2012

Are you running WDS on Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, or Server 2008 R2? If you are not using Server 2008 R2 and it is possible to upgrade I would recommend it. Also, if you are running 2008 R2 you can easily inject drivers into your boot images via the WDSMGMT console. Once you import the drivers into WDS you just right click on the boot image and select the option "Add driver packages to image" in the drop down menu.

ally_uk · June 2012

I'm using a Vista all version disc, I have mounted the Vista Business image via DISM, And am getting a Error:50 when trying to inject drivers into this image,

It's telling me the command is unknown or not supported when running DISM.exe against a Vista with SP1 Or Server 2008 target image

the command I am typing is

Dism /image:c:\temp\mount /add-driver /driver:c:\temp\drivers /recurse

ally_uk · June 2012

I am running Server 2008 R2 through the WDS management you cannot add drivers to a Vista boot image the option is greyed out as it is not supported.

sthomas · June 2012

It has been a few years since I had to do this but this support article from Microsoft should help.

Error message when you start a PXE client to connect to a WDS server on a Windows Server 2003 SP1-based computer or on a Windows Server 2008-based computer: "WdsClient: An error occurred while starting networking"

After looking at my old notes this did not working perfectly, I think I had to get a copy of the peimg.exe command. Honestly Windows Vista is not a good OS and it would be better to upgrade to Windows 7 or stick with Windows XP if possible. If it is not possible I hope this helps.

ally_uk · June 2012

Thanks for the heads up, I work for a charity that refurbishes computer hardware so we get an assortment of different windows licenses I figured rather then sit all day installing Operating systems via cds it would be better to implement some kind of deployment.

I am downloading another version of the WAIK it says it is supported for Vista SP1 and Server 2008 so let's see if DISM plays ball if that doesn't work then I will try out your method, Windows 7 is a piece of piss to inject drivers to through WDS in comparison Vista is proving to be a pain in the ass lol

WDS Woes

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