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DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

 
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Jeff Ferraro
Occasional Advisor

DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

We are using Proliant on 585 and 385s and we need to disable the second nic card in the unattend script, it's too much to do it manually when we have 100s of servers. Can anyone give some information on how this is accomplished?
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Jeff Ferraro
Occasional Advisor

Re: DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

Update: as of right now, we just copied the configuration of an already setup server and the applied that configuration to a newly setup server, and it successfully disabled the NIC card. This works, but we would prefer to do it all at one time while doing the scripted install.
Jeff Ferraro
Occasional Advisor

Re: DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

Anyone on this one? I'm sure someone else has had to do it before.
Oleg Koroz
Honored Contributor

Re: DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

Jeff Ferraro
Occasional Advisor

Re: DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

I have checked through all of that. They don't really support unattended options, for that is more of a Windows based option. So my only hope right now would probably be to call MS, but I think I'll try to figure it out first.

thanks for the try.
Jeff Ferraro
Occasional Advisor

Re: DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

Hmm, seems this is a done topic. I searched everywhere and can't find anything. It looks like I'll have to do it after the scripted install. I'm sure there has to be a way to keep windows from installing the NIC all together.
Oleg Koroz
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

Mike Ling UK
Occasional Advisor

Re: DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

This is somthing we needed to do as well but could not find a solution we liked - you would have thought this would be exposed by WMI but we can't find it if it is.

Two potential solutions present themselves: (the 1st solution we use internally)

1) Disable the NIC in the BIOS before installing the OS: Use RDP (or the DOS SmartStart Scripting Tool Kit) and use the CONREP.EXE utility passing in a config file (example attached for a DL380 G2)

2) Use Microsft's DEVCON utility. This is a device driver development utility so its a bit complex but if you can work it out it should work. See: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q311272
Mike Ling UK
Occasional Advisor

Re: DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

Actually there is a thrid option:

Use the CONREP utility from the Windows version of the SmartStart Scritping Tool kit to disable the NIC in the ROM once Windows is installed.

This uses an XML configuration file so is more complex to configure but once you get your head around the XML its not so dfficult. The HP documentation is quite good.

Mike
Jeff Ferraro
Occasional Advisor

Re: DISABLE 2nd NIC CARD IN UNATTENDED INSTALL

very nice, thank you. I'll try some of these methods.

jeff