Using WDS to deploy to new Dell computers

Hello,

After reading a few other threads on the Dell OEM partition and the
hal.dll error, I was wondering what I could do to image out of the box
machines.

My scenario...

Received 98 Dell Latitude D530 laptops that need to get imaged ASAP.
Loaded one with a base image from scratch and editied the boot.ini
file to only use partition 1 (removed the last line in boot.ini) since
when it would boot I would get the message asking what OS to boot
from :

Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Professional

Which I don't want...just want it to go straight to the logon window.

I finished the image and captured to the WDS server with no issues.

However, when I try to image any other out of box machine I get the
message that the system cannot boot because HAL.dll is missing or
corrupt etc... I know that this is because of the damn OEM Dell
utility partition...which I DO NOT WANT!

I want one single partition and don't want to have to edit the
boot.ini on the remaining 97 laptops manually to remove the line with
partition 2. I know how to fix this manually in winpe but the key
here is automation...this is a major pain considering we get about 600
pcs a year at my sites!

I know someone else out there has to have seen this issue and come up
with something!

Patrick,

Are you using sysprep before you image the machine? I have only seen that
error when sysprep had not been run before hand.

On Apr 4, 12:23*pm, Chase <Ch...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> Patrick,
>
> Are you using sysprep before you image the machine? I have only seen that
> error when sysprep had not been run before hand.

Yes, I am running sysprep before I capture the images.