Airbozo
08-01-2007, 03:15 PM
OK, a little preface is warranted;
We have a customer that insisted on purchasing the latest and greatest Super Micro system that has 2 mobos, 4 drives and 1 PSU in a 1u chassis. http://supermicro.com/products/system/1U/6015/SYS-6015T-TV.cfm
No place for a floppy or cdrom and ONLY 2 usb (no ps2) connectors. They want windows server 2003 on one side and redhat on the other. No problem. Wait, they also want an adaptec hardware raid card (3405) as well and 2 drives in raid1 configuration (for each side). No problem (I think). This system was put together while I was slacking away in Scotland so my first responsibility was to go to the customer site and "help" them load windows. Ahhh "piece of cake" says I...
Well an hour and a half later I had the system back at my bench trying to figure out why windows refused to recognize the usb floppy drive after it started loading. Turns out the SP1 version of 2003 server will not recognize a usb floppy once the windows code had launched. OK again no issue I have the M$ OEM tools available, I will fire that up and insert the required Adaptec drivers into the OS and burn a custom install disk. AHHHH! Several hours later I was still unable to actually burn an install disk, only a WinPE disk (preinstall environment) and it was looking for a network share... Screw that!
I did a quick search on google to find some info. I found this;
http://www.nliteos.com/
A nifty FREE utility to create custom windows install disks. It is also a fairly small program (2mb), and d'loaded quickly on our crappy T1. Just a few mouse clicks later I was burning a custom install disk, with the required drivers built in! Total time including downloading and burning; 30 minutes and I had a custom disk.
SCREW YOU M$ AND YOUR DEVELOPMENT TOOLS!
We have a customer that insisted on purchasing the latest and greatest Super Micro system that has 2 mobos, 4 drives and 1 PSU in a 1u chassis. http://supermicro.com/products/system/1U/6015/SYS-6015T-TV.cfm
No place for a floppy or cdrom and ONLY 2 usb (no ps2) connectors. They want windows server 2003 on one side and redhat on the other. No problem. Wait, they also want an adaptec hardware raid card (3405) as well and 2 drives in raid1 configuration (for each side). No problem (I think). This system was put together while I was slacking away in Scotland so my first responsibility was to go to the customer site and "help" them load windows. Ahhh "piece of cake" says I...
Well an hour and a half later I had the system back at my bench trying to figure out why windows refused to recognize the usb floppy drive after it started loading. Turns out the SP1 version of 2003 server will not recognize a usb floppy once the windows code had launched. OK again no issue I have the M$ OEM tools available, I will fire that up and insert the required Adaptec drivers into the OS and burn a custom install disk. AHHHH! Several hours later I was still unable to actually burn an install disk, only a WinPE disk (preinstall environment) and it was looking for a network share... Screw that!
I did a quick search on google to find some info. I found this;
http://www.nliteos.com/
A nifty FREE utility to create custom windows install disks. It is also a fairly small program (2mb), and d'loaded quickly on our crappy T1. Just a few mouse clicks later I was burning a custom install disk, with the required drivers built in! Total time including downloading and burning; 30 minutes and I had a custom disk.
SCREW YOU M$ AND YOUR DEVELOPMENT TOOLS!