WinPE Reboots at "Preparing Network Connections" - SCCM 1706

[tacotime]

A few weeks ago I upgraded SCCM to version 1706.  Shortly after, I decided to begin building out our environment for Windows 10 Enterprise 1703 deployment.  I upgraded our Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) version from build 2013 Update 2 to the latest version (build 8443) and Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) from Windows 10 1607 to Windows 10 1703 in preparation.  I added a new operating system image and boot image, injected the appropriate Windows 10 NIC drivers into the boot WIM, created a new MDT Task Sequence and deployed the boot image from the PXE-enabled distribution point.

I've tried PXE booting in both UEFI and Legacy from three different workstation models (that I've deployed before), but they all reboot at the "Preparing Network Connections" step in WinPE, prior to the selection of the Task Sequence.  I verified the machines are all receiving a valid IPv4 address in WinPE and I can ping the SMS Site Server/Distribution Point by IP and FQDN.  The smsts.log all point to the same error message: "Failed to download pxe variable file. Code(0x0000000E)" and "PxeGetPxeData failed with 0x80004005".  I've verified BIOS date/time settings are correct and we've made no changes to our network, only the aforementioned upgrades.  The error would suggest to me it's a driver issue, but since all the machines are picking up IP's and I can ping the DP from them in WinPE, I'm not sure why these are failing.

Has anyone else encountered this problems in 1706?  Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

 

[tacotime]

Just an update in case anyone else runs into this same issue:

Apparently one or more of the NIC drivers that I injected into the boot WIM are incompatible (although they're the exact same drivers as the ones I successfully used in my previous Windows 10 boot image).  I removed all network drivers from the boot image and reloaded/redistributed it to the DP.  I was then able to PXE boot three different model workstations to the "Welcome to the Task Sequence Wizard" step in WinPE now.  Issue is resolved.

[jordanb]

This also worked for me, but only after I applied the recent KB Hotfix that was released on 08/27/2017. I didn't inject any network drivers after the re-build/re-distribute. It also takes about 5-10 seconds now for the "Welcome to Task Sequence Wizard" to appear.

 

Thanks