RIS Remote Installation Service - A Problem Solved!

[Clark B. Lebarge]

I noticed a few people that were having the same problem that I was, in that
during an Installation of Windows 2000 Professional via the RIS service the
system would stop at a black screen. Eventually it dies with a Mutex
problem.

Well, I've figured out why it does it on my system, maybe a similar problem
is happening with yours.

The problem?

It's the DAMN VIDEO CARD!!!

After replacing every other component in the system the last thing left was
this lousy S3 Trio3D AGP video card. So I pull it out and replace it with a
PCI S3 Trio64V+ video card.

RIS works like a charm.

So if you're having problems with RIS hanging with a black screen try
putting a different video card in your system. It may be that the video card
is causing the problem.

For the record, this problem has been present in Beta 3, RC1, RC2, and now
RC3. I don't have the RTM version yet (come on MSDN! Where are you when I
need you?) so I haven't tested it on that version.

Thank you, Good night!

[George S. Ellis]

Just to add...

We had a similar issue with NT4 installation. The NT 4 VGA driver uses
video memory on the cards in VGA 800x600 mode. At least one mfgr was not
expecting SVGA to access the RAMDAC memory. BSOD. If you are presetting at
800x600, try 640x480 and see if it goes away.

"Clark B. Lebarge" <cl...@no.spam.for.me.lebarge.com> wrote in message
news:OgHiEYBT$GA.294@cppssbbsa05...

[Clark B. Lebarge]

Actually with RIS the failure occurs during the text mode portion of setup,
which is just a DOS character based screen.

The problem is somehow related to the way that RIS is trying to access the
disk drives, because the failure occurs at the point where the system
attempts to format the harddisk. I have no idea why this occurs.

If you wait for the program to finally crash it ends with a Mutex error,
which is strange, I've never seen a mutex error with NT before.

"George S. Ellis" <george...@delta-air.com> wrote in message
news:ONsZyCIT$GA....@cppssbbsa02.microsoft.com...

[Clark B. Lebarge]

Just an update for anyone interested, I've since tested the system with a
couple of other video cards, so far only the S3 Trio 365 based card has a
problem. Both an ATI Rage Pro and a S3 Virge GX worked fine.

[Kwame]

Is what I'm experiencing similar to what you guys are discussing? I tried
to install W2kPro-RC3 on my Dell Inspiron 7000 Notebook and failed. The
video controller is an ATI Rage Mobility Pro. The screen went blank when I
got to the point where it displays the following message:

"Installing Devices
Setup is detecting and installing devices on your computer.

Please wait while Setup detects and installs devices such as your keyboard
and mouse. This will take several minutes. During this time, your screen
may flicker for a few seconds."

[Clark B. Lebarge]

No, that is during the GUI mode portion of setup, the crash I'm talking
about occurs during the blue text mode setup.

"Kwame" <peas...@tc.umn.edu> wrote in message
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