Using RIS

All Windows RIS installs should be done behind the firewall in the Wolftech workroom. Bays 1 - 6 on the two left-hand tables and the center table have network cables that are connected behind the firewall. There is also one long yellow cable that is not tied down, and it can be used for laptops or cameras or other devices. The bays on the two right-hand tables are not behind the firewall, so don't use them for RIS.

Boot up Machine to Network

Dells

Hit F12 to bring up the boot menu and choose "Onboard Network Controller" or similar. On some older Dells, F12 may immediately do a network boot. If network boot doesn't show up as an option on the boot menu, go into the BIOS and look for "Onboard Devices" or "Integrated Devices". Look for "Network Interface Controller" or "Onboard NIC" or similar, and change the option to "On with PXE" or "On with MBA".

HP/Compaq

F12 for network boot. Should be an option without going into the BIOS.

IBM

Hit blue IBM Access button to interrupt startup and bring up boot menu. Choose network boot.

JWBs

F8 to bring up boot menu. Monitor tends to not turn on in time for you to see the option, so hit F8 a few times as soon as you see the keyboard, caps, and scroll lock lights flash. Like Dells, you may need to go into the BIOS and turn on the option for network boot. Look for the "Integrated Devices" option, and set "Lan Boot ROM" to "Enabled".

Once you choose the network boot, wait for it to start. You'll know it's starting when you see something like "Intel PXE", "Intel Boot Agent", "MBA Boot agent" or similar show up, and also the MAC address and GUID of the network card should appear. The machine should think for a moment and then you should be prompted to hit F12 to continue.

Going through the RIS Wizard

Manual or Automatic

Use Manual Install if this is a new install, or if you had to delete the computer's AD object for some reason. Choose Manual, then enter in the name of the computer (in lowercase) and hit Enter.

Use Automatic Install if the machine already has an object in AD, i.e. you pre-created the object or you are reinstalling a machine.

Choose OS Image

Obviously, choose the image for the OS that you need to install, but most often you'll use Windows XP SP2 w/Hotfixes. If you end up choosing the wrong OS image, you'll have to start the RIS all over again.

IMPORTANT - By default, the OS images will delete all partitions and re-format the entire HD. If there are partitions on the drive that need to be saved, choose the OS image with the "Leave Alone" option. That option will let you do the drive partitioning manually.

Extra

Finish going through the wizard, double-checking that the name of the computer is right, then continue hitting Enter until it exits the wizard and starts the installation. Keep an eye on it (especially if you chose the Leave Alone option) until it starts copying the setup files over to the drive. If it says that it cannot find a driver for the network card, talk to Patrick. Any other errors are probably a bad HD.

AD Object - Location and Adding Software

If you chose the Manual Install option, then the AD object was created automatically in the Unassigned folder in AD. Move that object into the correct folder (if you don't have access to AD, ask Brian, Patrick, Colin, or Dan to move and edit the object for you). If you chose Automatic Install, just double-check the object and make sure it's in the right folder, and move it if it's not.

Software packages are added by assigning specific group policies to the AD object. The ECE-<group name>.Desktops and ECE-<group name>.Laptops groups contain software policies that are common to all machines within that particular group, and these should be added to the machine first. Additional softwares not covered by these groups can then be added individually to the object. For example, an object for a new desktop in the mbs folder should first be assigned the ECE-mbs.Desktops group, then additional individual policies as needed.

If a group folder does not have a .Desktops or .Laptops group, do not just add the all the software individually. Get Brian or Patrick to create the groups.

Softwares that are usually common to all groups are Symantec Antivirus, AFS/Wolfcall, Office 2003, Visio 2003, Project 2003, pdfFactory Pro, WinSCP, Quicktime, Macromedia Flash Player, Firefox, Realplayer, Ghostscript/Ghostview, Adobe Reader, UltimateZip, and AOL Instant Messenger. Faculty and Staff also commonly get Oracle Calendar.

After Install

After the installation is finished and the computer boots into Windows, log in to the machine with your .admin account. Make sure the "Log on to" option is set to WOLFTECH or you won't be able to get in. Once you've logged in, goto Start -> Run, type in gpupdate, hit OK, then restart the machine once the command window goes away. Once it boots back up, log back in. You do this because sometimes a newly-installed machine won't recognize your administrator privileges the first time you log in.

You now have a few thing to do:

Bring up the Device Manager (Control Panel -> System -> Hardware tab, click "Device Manager") and check to see if any device drivers are missing or weren't loaded properly. Load any necessary drivers.

Go to Windows Update. At the least, download and install any Critical Updates, but you can sometimes get drivers if you choose the Custom Install option.

Assign software and get the machine to install it. If the machine does not want to install the software, try updating the network driver. On rare occasions, chipset updates help too. Also, you can use the gpupdate /force command (run from a command prompt) to force the computer to refresh its domain assignments.

You may have to install software that is not available as domain-assigned. Usually these are minor softwares or programs that are only used by a few people.

You may have to edit user permissions. Usually you only do this to add administrators to a machine, such as adding a faculty as admin on their own machine.

Defragment the hard drive after all the software is assigned.