Strange PXE boot behaviour (SCCM 2007 / WDS)

[DPE]

Hi guys,

 

Having a "funny" PXE boot experiece here at my company.

Last week, i realized that our branch office local DHCP server had not had its PXE options 66 and 67 set. Lucky enough they only have one server servicing PXE requests on the network, but just for good practice i added the both options so that all PXE requests were pointed to our SCCM/WDS server.

 

Now, heres the funny part.

 

Before i added the two DHCP options, clients sending a PXE request would have a normal PXE boot process.

1: Get an IP from DPCH and downloading WDSNBP.

2: Detecting architecture

3: Contacting WDS server, download smsboot\architecture\pxeboot.com

 

All good and normal.

 

Now after adding the two DHCP options, things have changed a bit. All clients (all 64 bit capable) now doing a PXE boot, now first detects as X86 architecture, trys to do a TFTP download of smsboot\x86\wdsnbp.com - then goes on to identify itself as a X64 client, trys a TFTP download of smsboot\x64\pxeboot.com which succeeds and then carrys on to the F12 which launches the boot image.

 

Any idea what could be the cause of this?

 

Attached is a picture of the PXE boot sequence after adding the DHCP options.

 

Thanks!

[DPE]

Ok, i've discovered a few differences between this branch office WDS server and the one i'm hosting at our main office.

 

First of all, the branch office WDS is an W2K8 R2 Std running WDS 6.1. Our main office is running W2K8 Std and WDS 6.0.

 

More interresting is the config output from WDSUTIL.

 

It seems that my branch office server has a boot file for X64 installed.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SETUP INFORMATION FOR SERVER XXXX

[----------------------------------------------------

Server State:

OS version: 6.1

WDS operational mode: Native

Installation State:

RemoteInstall location: D:\remoteinstall

RemoteInstall share up-to-date: Yes

Boot files installed:

x86 - Yes

x64 - Yes

ia64 - No

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As opposed to my main office server:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SETUP INFORMATION FOR SERVER YYYY

[-----------------------------------------------------------------------------]

Server State:

OS version: 6.0

WDS operational mode: Native

Installation State:

RemoteInstall location: D:\RemoteInstall

RemoteInstall share up-to-date: Yes

Boot files installed:

x86 - Yes

x64 - No

ia64 - No

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm deploying a single x64 OS image which can be done with just the X86 boot image.

So, would it be an idea to try to remove the X64 boot file from the branch office server, thereby forcing it just to use the x86? And, how do i remove this boot file?

Thanks!

[DPE]

81 views and no one with any ideas? Come on guys..

[anyweb]

make sure to distribute both architecture boot images to your distribution points, have you tried that ?

[Rocket Man]

Also have you tried restarting the WDS service..... it looks like it has not flushed itself out in quite a long time! (Request 4312)

[DPE]

make sure to distribute both architecture boot images to your distribution points, have you tried that ?

 

Thats another thing i don't understand. Both architecture boot images are successfully distributed to all PXE enabled distribution points, and yet they appear with different boot file configurations.

I will try restarting the server and see if that does a difference.