I use Microsoft Remote Installation Services (RIS) on my Windows 2000 network, and I'm attempting to use a customized installation procedure with some of my RIS images. I want RIS to copy additional files from the $OEM$ folder during installation, but RIS ignores the files. I was under the impression that RIS supported the $OEM$ feature. Is this information incorrect, or am I doing something wrong?
RIS does support the use of the special $OEM$ distribution subfolder. However, documentation about how to set up the folder on a RIS server is notably lacking. You've probably made the common mistake of placing the $OEM$ folder in the wrong location.
Each image on a RIS server's image volume has its own folder, which has the pathname \remoteinstall\setup\english\images\risimagename (where risimagename is the name you assigned the folder during the image-creation process). An \i386 subfolder exists under that folder. In a customized non-RIS Win2K installation, you place the $OEM$ folder under this \i386 folder. However, with RIS, you must place the folder at the same level as the \i386 folder. For example, a customized RIS image's base installation folder that resides at D:\remoteinstall\setup\english\images\win2k.pro would contain two subfolders: \i386, containing the x86 installation source files for the RIS image; and \$OEM$, containing the additional files to copy during setup.
