'Windows could not display the images available for installation'! as well as several other questions regarding WDS

[bingyeo]

Hi

 

 

I am a newbie at using WDS (and no experience in using RIS as well) and I have a rack of old servers to deploy W2k3R2SP2DC edition to. The rack consists of a HP DL380 with an optical drive, and the rest of the servers are HP DL140 with no optical drive. Right now, I have installed OS on DL380, but the other servers still have Linux on them and I would like to wipe them out.

 

To cut the long story short, I used the DL380 as my reference computer, and set up a virtual machine on my laptop running W2k3Enterprise. On the virtual machine is WDS, AD, DNS and DHCP, and I am using it as the WDS server.

 

Capturing of the image on DL380 seemed successful, and I moved on to the Deployment walkthrough (http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=264&hl=).

After creating the deploy.wim and booting to PXE on the same DL380, I was able to see the Install Windows (on Windows PE? still a little confused on what WinPE actually is) screens.

I was able to login to the domain and select my image, but alas, 'Windows could not display the images available for installation'.

Note that this is the same machine which I had previously captured the OS from, so hardware issues shouldn't be causing this?

 

My questions are:

Does WDS even support W2k3DC edition images?

Also, will there I able to deploy images to servers of different hardware? If not, any suggestions on how I might go about doing the installation of OS on the DL140s as I don't have any ready images for deployment?

 

Sorry if my questions sound really fundamental but I have really limited experience in image deployments, having never used WDS/RIS before.

 

Cheers

[anyweb]

hi and welcome

 

i'll try and answer your questions,

 

Does WDS even support W2k3DC edition images?

it should work just fine

Also, will there I able to deploy images to servers of different hardware?

yes but you may need to add additional drivers

If not, any suggestions on how I might go about doing the installation of OS on the DL140s as I don't have any ready images for deployment?

your actual problem is that 'Windows could not display the images available for installation''

 

can you confirm what Windows Vista DVD you used to do part one, step one of this post

 

was the Windows Vista dvd msdn, retail, OEM or something else ?

 

cheers

anyweb

[bingyeo]

Hi Any

 

Thanks for replying so quickly!

 

The Vista DVD which I obtained the boot.wim file from is an OEM Vista Home Basic x86 disc bundled with some laptop.

Is there any restriction on what version of Vista that the boot.wim needs to originate from?

 

Cheers

Bing

 

hi and welcome

 

i'll try and answer your questions,

 

it should work just fine

yes but you may need to add additional drivers

 

your actual problem is that 'Windows could not display the images available for installation''

 

can you confirm what Windows Vista DVD you used to do part one, step one of this post

 

was the Windows Vista dvd msdn, retail, OEM or something else ?

 

cheers

anyweb

[anyweb]

hi again

 

yes there are differences (not necessarily restrictions) resulting from what Vista dvd you used,

 

please read this post to see what i'm talking about AND can you confirm that you are or are not seeing the list of available images, or do you just get an error,

 

the more info you give me the better, but for now please consider either using the MSDN vista dvd OR editing the OEM copy and removing that pid.txt then try again

 

cheers

anyweb

[bingyeo]

Hi Any

 

I see the list of images available, but after I choose the one I want and confirm, the next window that pops up says 'Windows could not display the images available for installation'. The only option I have at this point is to click OK and the machine reboots.

 

I do not have the MSDN version of Vista, so I tried to remove pid.txt from the OEM boot.wim.

 

I installed WAIK and ran imagex, mounted boot.wim to a folder and found pid.txt in Sources folder.

When I try to delete the file, it gives me an Access is denied error. I looked at the securities properties of the file, it shows an unknown account which is not present in the AD of my virtual machine. Both this account and Administrators account shows Full control, but are greyed out, and even if i try to transfer ownership or remove inherited permissions, I am unable to give Administrators Full control over pid.txt, given the reason of Access is denied.

 

Help!

 

Bing

 

hi again

 

yes there are differences (not necessarily restrictions) resulting from what Vista dvd you used,

 

please read this post to see what i'm talking about AND can you confirm that you are or are not seeing the list of available images, or do you just get an error,

 

the more info you give me the better, but for now please consider either using the MSDN vista dvd OR editing the OEM copy and removing that pid.txt then try again

 

cheers

anyweb

[anyweb]

sounds like you've mounted it incorrectly

 

can you give me the exact commands you used to mount the wim file using imagex ? please copy paste how you did it here and that should explain why you are getting access denied....

 

here's an imagex howto here

 

cheers

 

anyweb

[bingyeo]

Hi Any

 

success.

 

I realised I made a major mistake in using /mount rather than /mountrw.

*redfaced*

 

I did an imagex /mountrw of image 2, found pid.txt and removed it.

Now I am able to choose which drive I want to deploy the image to after selecting the image to be deployed.

 

Thanks for your help!

 

 

sounds like you've mounted it incorrectly

 

can you give me the exact commands you used to mount the wim file using imagex ? please copy paste how you did it here and that should explain why you are getting access denied....

 

here's an imagex howto here

 

cheers

 

anyweb