Questions about HP ProLiant platforms and Windows Server 2003 support. HP support is defined for operating systems at the point of certification. 2003 image to me as a preinstall on my server—will I be in violation of any agreements. With an HP OEM license for Windows Server 2003 R2 x64, the media for both x64. Part 1 - The Base Install. Featured: Windows 2003 Small Business Server. I will be using in this tutorial my own copy of Windows 2003 Small Business Server Edition, which is the most complex scenario that I could think of. Doing the same with Windows XP is much simpler.
Windows Preinstallation (PE) Environment makes life easier for administrators who must configure and manage large numbers of Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 systems. PE works with Remote Installation Server (RIS) to let admins set up and install standard configurations for Windows systems across a network. This is much easier than having to visit each system to install the same configuration over and over.
But the process sometimes goes awry. When you use the Diskpart.exe tool to create partitions on a RAID set that includes raw disks, the system may fail to create the disk partitions. After about three minutes, you will get this error message: 'The disk management services could not complete the operation.'
If you quit Diskpart.exe and try again, you'll get the same error message. But if you restart the system in Windows PE and run Diskpart.exe again, the process will complete successfully.
What is happening is that the Volsnap.sys driver doesn't have any device object associated with it when Windows PE starts from a RIS server on a system that includes raw disks. In these circumstances, when Diskpart.exe creates a volume, the system can't find the Volsnap.sys driver, so the I/O Manager attempts to unload the Volsnap.sys driver. However, this operation fails because of an outstanding reference to the driver object. Unfortunately the failure doesn't remove Volsnap.sys from loaded modules list. This leaves things in a confused state and the confusion escalates when Diskpart.exe tries to create a volume.
As part of the volume creation process, Diskpart.exe searches the driver list for Volsnap.sys. When it doesn't find it, the system tries to load Volsnap.sys, but that fails because according to the loaded modules list, Volsnap.sys is already loaded.
Microsoft has introduced a hotfix for this problem. To use the hotfix on 32-bit systems you must have Service Pack 1 installed on Windows Server 2003. The 64-bit versions of Windows already contain the SP1 fixes.
Rick Cook has been writing about mass storage since the days when the term meant an 80K floppy disk. The computers he learned on used ferrite cores and magnetic drums. For the last 20 years he has been a freelance writer specializing in issues related to storage and storage management.
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Hi, I have recently ordered a Windows 2003 R2 OEM version to be installed on a server that was assembled by us. The box comes in with 3 CDs.. two are windows 2003 R2 installation CDs which are not Boot-able and another one that says 'Windows Server 2003 OEM Preinstallation Kit' (OPK) which is boot-able... When I boot from OPK CD, it takes me to Windows XP then Command Prompt... I cannot Eject the CD at this point. How do I install Windows 2003 from there?
After reviewing 'Getting Started Guide' it seems that I have to use OPK CD to create an image and then use that to install the OS and it is talking about Technician Computer, Master Computer etc... is there a simpler way to just install the OS?! I even install the OPK and then it gets to a section that says 'Select the version of Windows you want to install..if product does not appears in the list, click Add' I click on Add, then I inserted Windows 2003 R2 Disk 1 and clicked Add, I got 'the location you specified does not contain a recognized retail product'