Hi,
which is the best method to bootstrap Windows 2003 hosts?
I see that WinRM is not always available on this kind of host. What do you suggest?
Regards,
Rosario
WinRM is not installed by default on Windows 2003. 2008 (R1) and Vista was the first OS that came with it installed. You can install WinRM 2.0 separately on Windows 2003 SP2 and above. On SP1, you can install WinRM 1.1. That all said, Chef is not officially supported on versions of windows below 2008. Its possible that some resources simply will not work or may fail unexpectedly. Of course your resources may work fine so give it a try.
Thanks a lot. Thus, I can bootstrap the node (2003 SP2) using the same chef client listed for windows 2008 and above, because all the windows clients are the same (obviously respecting the architecture). Is it right?
Yes all the windows installers are the same but not tested on 2003.
Thanks again 
In my environment the run-list for those nodes will be
-
chef-client::configure
-
chef-client:default
-
wsus-client::default
On your experience, have you seen this run-list working on 2003 R2?
I have never run chef on 2003 so you could be a pioneer here. I’ll be curious to here if they work for you!
Ah Ah Ah … OK 
@ant4r3s If you can help it, I’d get off of Server 2003. Support ended for it in July 2015. Do you have options to upgrade?
Hi,
the goal is to re-platform all these 2003 hosts, but it’s not a matter of few time. Anyway, I don’t think to proceed with the Chef agent installation, as not tested by Chef Software.
Thanks a lot for your replies
Hi,
I've tried to bootstrap a 2003 node and during the first boot I receive a 128 error code. What does it mean? Does it exist a table with all this code?
The log is:
HOSTNAMEABC C:\Documents and Settings\userAdmin>chef-client -c c:/chef/client.rb -j c:/chef/first-boot.json -E Test
ERROR: Failed to execute command on HOSTNAMEABC return code 128
ERROR: Bootstrap command returned 128