Have to restart WDS after every PXE boot

[matty3021]

Hi,

 

After almost every PXE boot, when building another machine, I have to reset the WDS service. Even if i don't build a machine for a while, I will have to restart the service before building the next machine. I have reinstalled PXE and WDS many times and the problem still exists. Any help would be great as its not a show stopper, but is soooo frustrating.

 

Thanks

[Eswar Koneti]

Hi,

 

After almost every PXE boot, when building another machine, I have to reset the WDS service. Even if i don't build a machine for a while, I will have to restart the service before building the next machine. I have reinstalled PXE and WDS many times and the problem still exists. Any help would be great as its not a show stopper, but is soooo frustrating.

 

Thanks

 

can check out the event viewr for WDS errors if there are ?

what happens after a while(service status)when you reset the WDS service ?

What is the error message do u get when PXE boot from the Client ?

[Red3Recon]

You can try this fix, reduce the cache size. Open regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\SMS\PXE (or for 64-bit OS, head to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\SMS\PXE). Modify the CacheExpire DWORD and set it to a lower value, in my case I set it to decimal value of 1, meaning that cache will only last for 1 second.

 

Restart the WDS service.

 

Further info here – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2019640

[BRO-T]

You can try this fix, reduce the cache size. Open regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\SMS\PXE (or for 64-bit OS, head to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\SMS\PXE). Modify the CacheExpire DWORD and set it to a lower value, in my case I set it to decimal value of 1, meaning that cache will only last for 1 second.

 

Restart the WDS service.

 

Further info here – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2019640

 

I also have this problem. After looking in the registry at the said location i don't have any values under PXE!!! Its empty!

[Joe]

I also have this problem. After looking in the registry at the said location i don't have any values under PXE!!! Its empty!

 

Thats ok -- it's got a default value that is used when it's not defined. I believe it's 3600 (an hour).

 

However, if my understanding of this value is correct, it should only be impacting you if you are rebuilding the same machine over and over. Given that you said you wait a long time and it still fails, I don't think this is your issue.

 

Take a look at KB976073.

 

The Windows Deployment Service stops responding when you use a PXE service point on a computer that is running a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 or SP2 site server

 

I'm fighting with the same issue in my environment. Everything looks good -- no errors in the logs -- but sometimes I just have to restart WDS because it seems to stop responding as described in this article. The hotfix seems to have helped (I only get calls once a week instead of twice a day), but it still happens.

[Ocelaris]

I experience similar troubles, especially when we've had a system already entered (sometimes twice) and tried imaging, it failed, and then it seems like for a long time after it won't image. I'm testing this now at one of our sites and I'll report back.