During RIS Installation You Receive a "The Operating System Image You Selected Does Not Contain the Necessary Drivers for Your Network Adapter" Error Message Even Though the Drivers Are In the Selected Image (330074)

SYMPTOMS

When you use Remote Installation Services (RIS) to deploy a Riprep image of Windows 2000, you may receive the following error message:

The operating system image you selected does not contain the necessary drivers for your network adapter. Try selecting a different operating system image. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator. Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.

You may receive this error message even if the correct network adapter drivers are present in the selected Riprep image.

CAUSE

This issue may occur if the following conditions are true:

Multiple images created by the RISETUP utility for the Windows 2000 operating system family are located on the RIS Server.
OEM network adapter drivers are not configured for each Windows 2000 image on the RIS server.

For example, if the RIS Server contains a Win2000.ads image, a Win2000.pro image, and a Win2000.svr image, but the OEM network adapter drivers are only configured in the Win2000.pro image, you may receive the error message described in the "Symptoms" section of this article when you try to install any of the Windows 2000 images from the RIS server.

WORKAROUND

To work around this issue, configure the OEM network adapter drivers in the RISETUP image for each version of Windows 2000 that is available on the RIS Server. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

247983 Error Message: The Operating System Image You Selected Does Not Contain the Necessary Drivers...

MORE INFORMATION

During Riprep image deployment, Windows Setup compares key operating system files in the Riprep image with the RISETUP-generated folders in the same language folder on the RIS Server to find network adapter drivers. The existence of the expanded network adapter drivers is one of the reasons that you must create a base (RISETUP) installation on the RIS server before you run Riprep.

Windows Setup searches for key operating system files in the language folder that matches the language of the Operating System that you want to deploy. Because these files are the same in both Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Professional operating systems, Windows Setup does not differentiate between Windows 2000 Professional folders and Windows 2000 Server folders.

Windows Setup searches the image folders in alphabetical order for the RISETUP folder that contains the installation files for the OEM network adapter. Windows Setup stops searching when it finds the first matching RISETUP folder, and it uses the drivers located in that folder. If the OEM network adapter drivers are not located in the first matching RISETUP folder, Windows Setup does not continue parsing RISETUP folders, and you receive the error message described in the "Symptoms" section of this article.