Emergency Recovery Cd Keeps Assigning Private Ip

[c407ef61-f768-4172-acf2-0d58768780b0]

Is the Emergency Recovery CD dependent upon DHCP to assign an IP address to a server that is being restored?

 

We have an older Dell830 that we are trying to restore data to

We are using the latest version of the Emergency Recovery CD

Booting up in the ERCD is fine

We have to apply storage drivers as it uses an older CERC6 SATA controller. That also works fine and we can manipulate the partitions

 

However

 

When we get to the step restoring as a client. The ERCD keeps assigning a random private IP address (starts with 169.x.x.x). Based on this we are assuming that this recovery process needs a dhcp server on the network. Due to security restrictions, we are not allowed that service and all systems have static IP addresses.

 

In case we are wrong on that assumption, we have tried loading in the appropriate network drivers (for the Broadcom netextreme family of network drivers) plus tried a few other drivers, but it keeps assigning a private IP address to the server, and we thus cannot connect the Retrospect backup server. After the IP address is assigned, the next button is greyed out and all we can do is click on finish button, and the server reboots.

 

Any suggestions on what we may be doing wrong, or what we can do to ensure that an IP address is assigned without needing a DHCP server? This is a windows PE disk. Can we somehow modify it to assign an IP address during boot up within the PE environment?

 

Thanks in advance for your response.

[c407ef61-f768-4172-acf2-0d58768780b0]

Problem solved. We were able to modify the recovery disk via Windows Automated Installation Kit environment and added netsh and ipconfig commands to the startnet.cmd script. The recovery process will now assign a static IP on boot up and we can connect to the backup server and perform restores.

[mastercam]

Problem solved. We were able to modify the recovery disk via Windows Automated Installation Kit environment and added netsh and ipconfig commands to the startnet.cmd script. The recovery process will now assign a static IP on boot up and we can connect to the backup server and perform restores.

I tried to do this previously, with no success. Maybe I missed something, would you have an outline of the process available?

 

Thanks...glad to know this works!

[c407ef61-f768-4172-acf2-0d58768780b0]

I tried to do this previously, with no success. Maybe I missed something, would you have an outline of the process available?

 

Thanks...glad to know this works!

 

 

Sorry for the delayed reply as we were moving our offices. Here is the short version. Let me know if you need more information. I'm assuming you already know how to work with Microsoft Windows AIK.

This is a modified discover image disk.

 

Go to the boot images folder in WDS and select the capture image disk you want to use

Right click on the capture image disk and select create discover boot image

Once the discover boot image has been created - mount it in AIK (via deployment tools command prompt - I use imagex)

Modify the image as follows:

 

A. Create and copy winpeshl.ini file to windows\system32 on mounted image. Edit the Winpeshl.ini as follows:

 

Winpeshl.ini text:

 

[LaunchApps]

%SYSTEMDRIVE%\windows\system32\cmd.exe

 

B. Create netconfig.bat and copy file to windows\system32 on mounted image. NOTE that the static IP address you use will depend upon what you have available. This script creates the IP address and pings it to ensure that the address is assigned. It also starts the DNS client, pings again this time to allow time for the service to start (a crude timer), and then adds the DNS server entry into the IP settings. Addresses below are just examples:

 

Netconfig.bat text:

 

wpeinit

netcfg -v -winpe

wpeutil initializenetwork

netsh interface ipv4 set address "local area connection" static 192.168.0.51 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 1

ipconfig /all

ping -n 6 192.168.0.1

net start "dns client"

ping -n 6 192.168.0.1

netsh int ip set dnsserver "local area connection" static 192.168.10.1 primary

 

C. Create pullimage.bat and copy file to windows\system32 on the mounted image. This is simply the command to connect to the imaging server. You can use IP addressing rather than DNS if you like.

 

Pullimage.bat text:

 

echo on

CD\

setup.exe /wds /wdsdiscover /wdsserver:server.domain.name

 

Now when you start up using the modified cd, you will get a dos box and command prompt and you can run the batch files from there. Note that in this example you can only change the assigned IP by modifying the script and burning a new image each time. We have a permanently assigned static IP to be used only for imaging single workstations at a time (we are not a big group :-)). If you want to be able to enter any IP via the command line, then you have to modify the netconfig batch file to allow for assigning variables to the IP address within the netsh command.

 

Also, if you want to upload an image, the imagex.exe command is already resident on the modified CD, and the documentation for using it to upload images is on the MS website.

[mastercam]

Hi.

 

I havn't used that program.

 

*sigh...learning curve again!