Despite the release notes in the PE2950 2.6.1 BIOS, “Added support for the Microsoft(R) Windows Server(R) 2008 R2 operating system”, the install package doesn’t actually work properly. It has a prompt telling you that it’s running on an unsupported OS. This completely invalidates the silent install capability. This problem seems to extend to all the other install packages.

Fortunately, this is pretty easy to work around with the built in Application Compatibility settings in Windows. You just need to set the executable to the Windows Server 2008 (Service Pack 1) compatibility mode:

Since I’m running all these packages as part of an unattended build, I went ahead and set all of the packages to the WS08 SP1 compatibility mode on a test machine and then exported the registry key that has these settings. To do that, export HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers to DellCompat.reg. Next, you can run reg import DellCompat.reg and import the settings which will enable the packages to function correctly.

For reference, I put all of the update packages in C:\DellSrc. The batch file below imports the registry changes, installs all of the latest (as of 28-Nov-2009) drivers and firmware for a Dell PowerEdge 2950 running Windows Server 2008 R2, and installs OpenManage Server Administrator 6.1.

reg import c:\dellsrc\DellCompat.reg
c:\dellsrc\PE2950_BIOS_WIN_2.6.1.EXE /s
c:\dellsrc\BMC_FRMW_WIN_R202152.EXE /s
c:\dellsrc\ESM_FRMW_WIN_R149431.EXE /s
c:\dellsrc\RAID_FRMW_WIN_R216024.EXE /s
c:\dellsrc\RAC_FRMW_WIN_R209365.EXE /s
c:\dellsrc\RAID_FRMW_WIN_R216021.EXE /s
c:\dellsrc\NIC_DRVR_WIN_R236633.EXE /s
c:\dellsrc\NIC_DRVR_WIN_R234753.EXE /s
c:\dellsrc\NETW_FRMW_WIN_R239524.EXE /s
c:\dellsrc\BMC_FRMW_WIN_R202152.EXE /s

start /wait msiexec /i c:\dellsrc\openmanage\SysMgmt.msi ADDLOCAL=BRCM,INTEL,IWS,OMSM,RAC5,SA /qb

Here is the DellCompat.reg registry script:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
"C:\\DellSrc\\PE2950_BIOS_WIN_2.6.1.EXE"="WINSRV08SP1"
"C:\\DellSrc\\BMC_FRMW_WIN_R202152.EXE"="WINSRV08SP1"
"C:\\DellSrc\\ESM_FRMW_WIN_R149431.EXE"="WINSRV08SP1"
"C:\\DellSrc\\NETW_FRMW_WIN_R239524.EXE"="WINSRV08SP1"
"C:\\DellSrc\\NIC_DRVR_WIN_R234753.EXE"="WINSRV08SP1"
"C:\\DellSrc\\NIC_DRVR_WIN_R236633.EXE"="WINSRV08SP1"
"C:\\DellSrc\\RAC_FRMW_WIN_R209365.EXE"="WINSRV08SP1"
"C:\\DellSrc\\RAID_FRMW_WIN_R216021.EXE"="WINSRV08SP1"
"C:\\DellSrc\\RAID_FRMW_WIN_R216024.EXE"="WINSRV08SP1"

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