BL10e and Windows XP

[Eyfi Stefansson]

I need to install Windows XP on a BL10e server. Is that OS supported ? I used the w2k3 server support pak but always when I try to boot the server to our Altiris PXE server it freezes...

Is there a support pak for Windows XP professional on BL10e servers or should it be ok to use w2k or w2k3 support pak ?

[Sunil Jerath]

Hello,
Unfortunately, none of our servers support Windows XP. This is the Official response but surely some folks have managed to install Windows XP on other Models of our Servers by selecting the 'Other' option in the OS and then manually specifying the drivers when needed.

Regards,

[Alexander Gaiswinkler]

Hi Eyfi,

no there's no XP support for both BL10e and BL10e G2. So there's also no PSP.
For what do you need XP for?

Regards
Alex

[Eyfi Stefansson]

Thanks for your replies !

The reason I need to install XP is that one of our Application requires to run on windows XP or 2000 Pro. I guess it won't be a problem to run 2k/2k3 server but that requires server licenses...

I will continue installing XP, I can't give up so easily :-)...

It would be great to get comments from users who have installed XP on BL10e servers, how it really works in practice..

Regards Eyfi.

[Peter Frazer]

My bet is that you can use the diagnostic console to connect a USB CD-ROM drive to the blade and boot drom it to run the install. The hardware at its heart is IA-32, so XP should have no problem installing to it. The drive is an IDE hard drive so no special drivers needed there.

I would think that most of the drivers can be installed individually on XP unless it does some OS/version checking.

After you get a blade the way you like it, I would highly recommend taking an image after sysprepping it (and/or Altiris imaging utility if you use RDP). Let us know if this helps.

Peter

[Ted Bleimehl]

I have XP running on our blades. Basically I installed from a network share and made it dual boot with 2000. I then cloned that image for replication to other blades. Cheesey, but it got the job done with minimal fuss.

There are some issues we are experiencing with the blade installs and some of our testing tools. Odd things like some windows not being recognized, or incorrect values being selected by our testing software. Things that never have shown up on our HP desktops running XP and our testing software.