WDS, SCCM, PXE Issue

[borngunners]

I have WDS installed on my sccm 2007 server and I have DNS on a seperate server as well as DHCP on a seperate server. My SCCM 2007 is installed well, with no issues from the status. I am having hard time setting up Deployment via PXE. Please help me. I have gone through your step by step instruction, but no luck. At first I had a Pending Request, Now, it can't even find the specified file. What should I do?

[anyweb]

can you post the SMSPXE.log please

[borngunners]

I did not see any SMSPXE.Log in the log directory. Where can I find it?

[Peter van der Woude]

It's in the client log folder (SMS_CCM\Logs) of the site server.

[borngunners]

These are the lists of logs I have attached starting from S*....

[anyweb]

there is more than one LOGS folder, double check that you are looking in the right place, if in doubt use explorer to SEARCH your disc partitions for the file

[borngunners]

I did not find smspxe.log after searching the entire local disk.... I am probably missing something

[borngunners]

Anyweb, can I send you an invitation so you can take a look at my configuration please.

Thanks

[szichen]

If you are having issues booting into the PXE environment like i have experienced over the past few weeks then you might want to try and distribute an x64 boot image to the PXE Distribution Point even if you are trying to deploy an x86 OS and have already deployed an x86 boot image to the pxe distribution point.

I had the issue where the PXE boot was stuck trying to contact the server. I tried removing the PXE Service roles as well as uninstalling WDS multiple times and eventually read somewhere that a machine with x64 architecture requires an x64 boot image to begin a pxe boot. it then uses the x86 boot image once it connects to the server.

What i did...

1. Stopped the WDS service.

2. Removed the PXE service point role from SCCM 2007 R2 server.

3. Uninstalled WDS.

4. Restarted server

5. Renamed the RemoteInstall folder (didn't delete it because i wasn't sure what was gonna happen..i suppose this can be deleted after)

6. Deleted the following folder "PXEBootFiles" from "C:\WINDOWS\Temp\"...this one is a bit tricky as u need to drill down into the folder and give full permission of the logged in user to the files and folder within. You will notice that a different user with only the sysid shown has full rights. I found that i had to try some of the following to be able to delete the folder: give myself full rights to the folder, delete that sysid, uncheck the read-only option. I also noticed that i was only able to delete sometimes if I gave myself rights and clicked on "Apply" and left the properties box of the folder open before i could delete - don't know why but when i clicked "OK" and tried to delete the folder, i couldn't. When i checked the folder properties again, the changes i made weren't saved. Btw, i started deleting from the lower levels first.

7. Once the above folders are deleted (actually i never tried to just reinstall WDS and the PXE service without deleting the above folder - it might still work), install WDS but do not configure it. If the service hasn't started, thats fine because once the PXE service has finished installing it will automatically start the service.

I forgot to mention here earlier to restart the server after WDS is installed.

8. Install the PXE service role.

9. Check the "PXESetup.log" file to confirm that the PXE service has been installed successfully. Hint: the last line should read: "Installation was successful". If you find that the log does not have the latest log, wait for another 10-15 minutes and don't get impatient. I didn't have any patience so i restarted the server and waited for about 10 minutes before the WDS service started (it didn't start immediately - maybe the PXE role had not been completed - i started cursing when the log wasn't updated and the WDS service still hadn't started!!).

10. Once WDS service has started, advertise your x64 Boot Image and x86 Boot Image to the PXE service distribution point. Check the status to confirm that these have been "Installed".

11. Give your PXE boot another go.

 

I also noticed that under [DriveLetter]\RemoteInstall\SMSBoot, the two x64 and x86 folders should have the PXE boot files. Before I distributed the x64 boot image, the [DriveLetter]\RemoteInstall\SMSBoot\x64 folder only had the "abortpxe.com" file.

 

I hope this helps those who have scratched their heads in regards to their PXE boot not working!! :)