I want Microsoft Remote Installation Services (RIS) on my Windows 2000 network to copy additional files from the $OEM$ folder during installation, but RIS ignores the files and doesn't copy them to the RIS client system. What am I doing wrong?

A. 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 remoteinstallsetupenglishimagesrisimagename (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:remoteinstallsetupenglishimageswin2k.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.