RIS endless loop on Win XP install

When you expand the NIC driver that you download from Dell (R59444.exe) it creates several subdirectories. The intent of the file is to present an executable to be run on the machine - but you're not going to do that. When you're using RIS you are directed to copy the files from the XP or 2000 subdirectory into both the the \$oem$\$1\Drivers\NIC subdirectory and the \i386 subdirectory.

One of the files located in both the Win2k & XP folders is called setup.exe. This is copied to the target machine during the file copying phase of RIS. The setup file is copied to the drivers' directory and launches when XP attempts to load itself in its initial device discovery phase. The first time it runs it copies the NIC driver files into the appropriate directory & reboots the machine. When it comes up a second time there is a flag stating that "...setup is restarting" and the setup file (still residing in the NIC directory) is run again during the discovery phase of the load process. This time the program prompts you to answer if you want it to overwrite it's files; no matter what option you choose the setup program reboots & the cycle will loop forever.

Solution: Delete the setup.exe file from the NIC driver subdirectory. Also ensure that it is not present in the \i386 directory. The driver files I have in my NIC subdirectory are:

e1000msg.dll

e1000325.cat

e1000325.din

e1000325.inf

intelnic.dll

prounstl.exe   (I left this in because I was lazy; once I had a working image I didn't bother to continue experimenting. You can probably delete this with no problem.)

- Mark T. Gibson, MCSE

Hello again,

This worked great, thanks a lot!