Updated: July 13, 2020 (August 4, 2003)

  Charts & Illustrations

How RIS Works

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290 wordsTime to read: 2 min
Michael Cherry by
Michael Cherry

Michael analyzed and wrote about Microsoft's operating systems, including the Windows client OS, as well as compliance and governance. Michael... more

Administrators can use Remote Installation Services (RIS) to install Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 on a new computer. Prior to the installation, the administrator has installed RIS, used the RIS Preparation (RIPrep) tool to create a master image, and placed information about the computer in Active Directory (AD). The installation of a computer using RIS involves the following steps:

(1) The user turns on a bare-metal computer (a computer without an OS) that supports the Pre-execution Environment (PXE). PXE sends a Distributed Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) discover packet and a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) that is heard by a DHCP and a RIS server.

(2) The DHCP server responds with a valid IP address.

(3) The RIS server uses the Boot Information Negotiation Layer (BINL) to contact AD. AD provides information about the image for this computer and indicates whether a specific RIS server should handle the request (for load balancing).

(4) The RIS server uses the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) to download a network boot program (startrom.com) and then launches it.

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