Deployment Solution

Dears,

I recently installed the DS 6.9 SP6 from scratch on a VM (W2K8R2). The database and PXE is running on the same machine. From my perspective everything worke fine. I also created an anwser file for an unattended Win 7 installation and did a installation for test using another VM. IP address assignement, boot to WinPE and installaton of Win 7 worked fine. Now I used a physical machine and I am faced with the problem that nearly always the WinPE is not loaded by the physical PC. In case it is loaded and I trigger the installation task it starts and immediately stops . I also used another PC and model but the same happens while installations at a VM machine was not a problem the same time. Next I did was adding the updated drivers for the physical PC's to the WinPE boot.wim using the PXE Manager wizard, but it did not solve the issues. At the moment I am completely lost. Has anybody a DS 6.9 SP6 in place as a VM without any issues? I also found reports about issues caused by vSwitch from VMWARe. May the problems be caused by the VMWare vSwitch? Would be great if someone could give me a hint about this.                  

You need to narrow this down.  If the task fails, then it's likely something like network access.  If the agent never connects, that's generally drivers.  You'll likely need more testing though for some consistent results.

Hello,

Thanks fpr your comment.

The agent connects and an IP is assigned, otherwise the Win 7 installation would never start.

Am I right with this?

I also compared the unattended setup log files on the VM machine and the physical machine.

None showed an error.

Regards

M.

I found the physical machine (HP Elite 8300 CMT)  to be the root of the problem. If a UEFI mode was used, the installation stopped short after selecting the bootx64.efi from the original DVD. Updating BIOS did not help in this. I had to enable legacy mode for the PXE option rom first. Now the installation started but faild to create the GPT efi partion layout in the legacy mode. Thus leading me to enable the harddisk in the legacy boot options as well, what again caused the system to install with the BIOS based partition layout. Not nice but working.

Regrads

M.