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Remote Installation Services Technical Reference

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Remote Installation Services Technical Reference

Remote Installation Services (RIS) is an automated installation technology that you can use to create installation images of operating systems or of complete computer configurations, including desktop settings and applications. These installation images can then be made available to users at client computers. RIS is typically used during large-scale deployments when it would be too slow and costly to have administrators or end users interactively install the operating system on individual computers.

When you use RIS, a CD-ROM is not required for installing an operating system on a client computer. The client computers must support remote startup with the Pre-Boot eXecution Environment (PXE) ROM, or they must be started with a remote-startup floppy disk and have a network adapter that is supported by that disk.

The Setup program in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 provides the method for carrying out an automated installation using RIS.

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