BDD Bare metal WMI Issues

[Guest]

Just thought I'd document a couple of issues I've had with WMI not
working in bare metal situations. The same OSDWinPE.wim works under
Refresh without a problem.

zerotouchinstallation.vbs - log
======================================================
Operating System = WinPE
Is a server OS = False
Warning - Unable to obtain HAL information since WMI is unavailable.
Host name = MININT-GU631JC1
Warning - Unable to obtain asset details (asset tag, serial number,
make, model, product, UUID) since WMI is unavailable.

It seems there's a bug with mechanism that updates the OSDWinPE.wim
file. If you are building a custom OSDWinPE.wim (Update Windows PE in
SMS console) the source must be a CD. It cannot be a UNC or Network
path, as empty dirs aren't copied for some reason. These missing
directories break WMI under readonly (CD/ISO) environments. I suppose
as it cannot create these needed directories.

Hopefully this will be addressed with a patch.

Rob

 

[Michael Niehaus [MS]]

WMI should work with bare metal, although if you are placing Windows PE on a
RIS server and using PXE boot, the WMI repository for PE on the RIS server
will be corrupted if the account logging onto RIS has read/write access to
the RemInst share.

The "Update Windows PE" issue is a known bug; you need to make sure you
don't use a UNC path for the reason you mentioned.

-Michael Niehaus
Systems Design Engineer
(e-mail address removed)
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Guest]

Michael,

Thanks for the response.

We're using the Win2003 RAMDisk (ISO) method with PXE rather than RIS.
Much simpler.

Is there going to be a patch for this OSD bug?

Interestingly I only found this bug, when I used an SDI image
(ReadWrite) and noted it worked. (Noting the extra dir/files for WMI.
Unfortunately, the rest of the sotry was OSD doesn't seem to support
SDI, as it interprets it as the 1st fixed disk and tries to install the
OS on it.

Rob