I have few questions that keep bugging me all the time 1. What is the relation between WDS and SCCM 2007 ? I know its for pxe service point or something. But im still not clear on this one what exactly WDS is doing in SCCM 2007 ? And how to configure SCCM 2007 so that when i boot the clients VIA PXE it responds to all the known and uknown client computers 2. Micrsoft says don't configure the WDS server just enable its service and thats enough. But how do i get the clients to boot to SCCM 2007 all the time without approving the clients. 3. I booted 2 systems in my test environment VIA pxe to connect to the SCCM 2007 it got connected the first time but now both of those 2 computers are NOT connecting back again to SCCM 2007 via pxe. I get the following message : Downloaded WDSNBP ............... The details below show the information related to the PXE boot request for this computer. Please provide these details to your windows deployment services administrator so that this request can be approved. Pending request ID : 62 Contacting Server : 10.1.3.6 ( this is my SCCM 07 server IP) Pxe boot aborted. Booting to the next device ..... PXE-MOF : Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM Any idea why i m getting this error. I created a Custom OSD Computer collection with no rules, Imported computer information into the SCCM 2007. Created a task sequence and advertised it to OSD computers collection but still the same error. I tried clearing the last PXE Advertisement option but still it didn't work. I want SCCM 2007 to respond to all the known clients requests and i also want to know how to set SCCM 2007 in such a way that it responds to both unknown and known clients requests so that i don't need to approve anything ??

1. I think you already know the answer to this. WDS is the PXE server for ConfigMgr. ConfigMgr hands off the request to WDS after checkign it's own database to make sure it knows about the computer. 2. Not sure if I understand what you mean by "approving" ConfigMgr has to know about the computer. You can configure the WDS PXE filter from MDT so that it will add computers into Configmgr if they are not known. 3. This is by design to keep you from accidently imaging a computer. To get them to boot from PXE again right click on the computer or a collection in the admin console and select clear last PXE advertisement. I hope this at least helps you some. I am no expert in this at all.

Hi Chaudry, First thing to try is advertise TS as mandatory and Second is to set WDS pickup the known and unknown clients and load boot file into SMSboot. Try this step below : 1. To advertise a task sequence: Open Configuration Manager Console Go to System Center Configuration Manager>Site Database>Computer Management>Operating System Deployment>Task sequences Right click ona Task sequence you want to advertise. Select Advertise New Advertisement Wizard will start. Enter Advertisement Name. Task Sequence should be already populated for you. Enter the collection name where computers will reside for OS deployment. Make sure you select the correct Collection.I have created a separate collection for OSD beforehand. Tick Make this task sequence available to boot media and PXE. Click Next. In the Schedule leave defaults. If you configure Mandatory assignments SCCM will force OSD to all machines in the collection. In the Distribution Points select Access content directly from a distribution point when needed by running task sequence. I chose this option because the whole image process is much faster over the network in my place. Also depending on your SCCM setup you might need to tick on When no local distribution point is available, use remote distribution point and When no protected distribution point is available, use an unprotected distribution point. This really depends on you SCCM, network and site setups. Click next TickShow the task sequence progress and click Next Yuo should not need to change any Security settings. Click Next. Review Summary and click Next. Wait until progress finishes and click Close. 2. Install WDS and configure for SCCM Requirements - Windows Server 2003 SP2 for the WDS server *. - Active Directory and DNS up and working. - DHCP server available and authorized by Active Directory on your network. - On the client side: NICs PXE compliant. Almost all of Network Adapter that are available for several years now are in fact PXE compliant, so I think you dont have to worry about that. And if we want to deploy our own full unattended images we also going to need: - Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). We will use of this kit the Windows System Image Manager to create our Unattended Files for installation. Heres the link to download the DVD image for installation. Hardware Requirements - Processor: No special specs on processor characteristics, but of course to WDS work properly you will need a Pentium III 800 MHz or higher. - Memory: 256mb minimum. - HD: Recommended 30 GB of free space on the disk that will be used for images storing. It always depends on the images amount of images you will use to deploy. For example, I have over 5 full Vista images (meaning operating system, Office 2007 and several other applications) and less than 10 GB of disk space used. Installation To install WDS on a Windows Server 2003 SP2 you only need to add the component from Add or Remove Programs To install it on Windows Server 2008 (codename Longhorn) it is practically the same procedure, just add the Windows Deployment Services role from the "Add Role Wizard". After that, all the configurations tasks are the same, since it is the same snap-in; and you'll get bonus options using WDS on W2K8, like multicasting transmissions. I'll comment this on the next posts. * To install Windows Deployment Services on Windows Server 2003 SP1 first you must install the Remote Installation Service (RIS) component, you will not need to configure anything special with this component. After that, you have to use WAIK media: in the options you will find the Windows Deployment Services for installation. Configuration Once installed, access the Windows Deployment Services snap-in. On the console, to get started right-click on the listed server and select Configure Server. Here are the considerations you need to have to configure your server properly. Configuring the Server - After you selected the folder where you are going to store all the images for WDS, you need to check on the DHCP settings. The wizard will explain you about this option. Since in my example I have a Microsoft-DHCP Server working on a different server from the WDS, these two options will remain unchecked. If you have both, WDS and DHCP, on the same server you should check both options. - Response Configurations: This is where you set to which clients you will respond when you receive a PXE request. The difference between known clients and unknown is set on if the Computer Object exists on Active Directory. If you want to create the computer objects before running WDS on that computer, you should have the GUID of that computer and include that information on the computer object. When you create the object on Active Directory, using Active Directory Users and Computers you need to set that This is a managed computer and insert the GUID. Selecting this option can be really annoying if you want to improve your deployment, because you have to add the object first on Active Directory every time that you want to deploy an image, but its of course the more secure option to apply. Or you can use the option For unknown clients, notify administrator and respond after approval. With this option, all the unknown clients that request to boot from PXE will appear to you inPending Devices on your console, from there you can approve or decline them. Or simply use the option Respond to all (unknown and known) computer clients and when you don't need WDS, you can just stop the service to avoid any rogue clients. On the final step of the wizard, select to start adding images now are we are ready to go! Adding Boot Images Before creating a complete image to be deployed with WDS, we need to add first a Windows Pre-Installation image (WindowsPE). With this image we provide the server with a pre installation environment needed for all installations. WindowsPE comes, as all the new operating systems, in a WIM format, included in the Vista or Windows 2008 installation media. 1 - To add the image, expand the server options on the console and on the Boot Images select Add Boot Image. Remember that this WindowsPE that we are adding will be the same for all the operating systems that we are going to use with WDS. 2 - Select Browse and check on the Vista or Windows 2008 installation media for the folder Sources and the file boot.wim. This is our WindowsPE. 3 - Select the name for this image and click on Next Note: You can also use, of course, the x64 WindowsPE. Will be discussing it later. 4 - Review the summary and click on Next. And now the Windows Pre-Installation Environment is available to boot from your network. A clean Vista installation? The procedure to add a clean Vista installation to WDS its pretty simple and practically the same procedure as for the boot image. As a good practice you should always have a clean Vista installation available on your server, here are some reasons: 1 The unattended files that you may use on full images deployment also apply to clean installations. 2 WDS use a smart storage method, which does not duplicate any installation files. Meaning that if you save a clean installation of Vista and you add later a full Vista image with several applications included, all the new information that is stored are the differential (delta) files between those two. 3 Rearm activations: If you use the command line slmgr rearm on the Vista installations to reset back your grace period back to 30 days, you should know that Vista only allows 3 times to run this command. But when you deploy a full image, the times that you can run this command line reduces according to the time when the image was created. But using the clean WIM file extracted from the Vista media, does not have that drawback when you run the rearm command. 4 Having a clean installation always available that you can deploy any time will help you when you need to make changes to the default installation image or when you need to start a new one from the scratch. Here are the steps (again, you have to use the Vista installation media): 1 On the WDS console, right click on Install Images and select Add Image Group 2 Select the name that you are going to use for this group. For Example: VistaInstallation. 3 Right click on Install Images again and select Add Install Image. When the wizard starts select to use the group youve just created and click Next. 4 On the next window, browse the Vista media for the folder Sources and select the file install.wim and click Next 5 Since the Vista installations always include all the versions on the same file, we should select only the one that apply for our case. In my case, Windows Vista Ultimate. Click Next 6 On the summary window click Next and the image will start to upload to your server. At this point we have all the necessary components to deploy a clean image for Vista from the network; but the installation remains attended. So, the disk configuration and the Vista options (language, product key, computer name, etc) still need to be manually inserted. 3. Insert boot file in RemoteInstall/SMSboot 1. Remove the SMS PXE role. Look at the PXESetup.log file to verify that the uninstall is complete and successful.2. Uninstall the WDS server.3. Reboot the machine.4. Re-install the WDS server, but do not configure it. Do nothing at all other than installing WDS.5. Add the SMS PXE role. Look at the PXESetup.log file to verify that the installation is complete and successful.6. Add the boot images to the SMS PXE DP share. Look at the distmgr.log file to verify that the replication of the boot image to the DP is complete and successful.7. Try booting a PXE client. Unfortunately the above solution did not worked the fourth time.After looking through the logs and installation files Ive found that c:\RemoteInstall\SMSBoot contains folders ia64, x64, x86 which were empty. I had a rough idea what should be in those folders. The first place Ive looked at was boot.wim files.Open SCCM console then go to Site database>Computer Management>Operating System deployment>Boot ImagesRight click on image and choose properties Select Data Source Tab. There you will see the image path. Once you know the location you have to mount the image. You will need both image x86 and x64.Copythe image filesto a folder(Ive copied to the root) and rename them. I have renamed them to boot_64.wim and boot_x86.wim To mount the image you need imagex which is a part of WAIK and WAIK is installed with SCCM.Open Windows explorer on your SCCM server and go to C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools in there you will find 6 folders Now you have to open the folder depending on your OS. So if you are running SCCM on x86 you open x86 folder. If its 64 bit then open amd64. For Itanium open ia64. Now right click on file named wimfltr.inf and choose Install. This will install WIM filter. Create a new folder it will be used to as a mounting point. Ive created WIM_Mount Open Command prompt and mount the image to do that you need to provided image file and image number and mounting point. The syntax would look like this:imagex /mount ImageFileName.wim ImageNumber ImageMountingPoint Note: This will mount image as read-only. If you need to modify image then change mount to mountrw but we are not going to need this. Again you have to use the imagex filedepending on thethe OS that you are running(x86, x64, ia64). So in my case the string looks like this:C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64\imagex.exe /mount c:\boot_64.wim 1 c:\wim_mount Once the image is mounted, open mounting point and there you should see folders. In the mounting point browse to Windows\Boot\PXE Copy the content of the folder toc:\RemoteInstall\SMSBoot x86, x64 folder depending what boot image you have mounted. In my case Ive mounted x64 boot image so Ive copied everything to c:\RemoteInstall\SMSBoot\x64 Unmount the image:C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64\imagex.exe /unmountc:\wim_mount Now mount the other boot image and copy the files to the other folder. Try PXE boot you machine and it should work.Thats it. Goodluck Muthu

Have a look at this excellent webcast regarding SCCM and MDT 2008.

Also make sure your advertisement is set to "Always rerun program" at least for the testing in the lab. You may want to do "rerun if failed previos attempt" for the live environment.

This will give you a clear picture regarding my problem Im using PXE method to connect to the SCCM 2007 and then start the OSD on client computers Here are the screenshots about the problem which i m facing @ moment You can see mutiple Duplicate Records because i have done the image on the same computer 4 times in 2 days Status Screenshot about the same duplicate Records Because of this problem i m not able to PXE boot to the SCCM 2007 for OSD. If i want to start OSD on the same computer then i delete the computer records in the above collection which i mentioned. Import computer information again to the collection and then it starts PXE booting again to SCCM 2007. Hence only then i m able to do the OSD NOTE : What if i don't want to use MDT 2008 with SCCM 2007. I only want to use WDS and SCCM 2007 Second thing is that if i make the Advertisement Mandatory then it will force the OSD on all the computer given inside the collection which i don't want to do. You only choose Mandatory option when you want to do the OSD on totally new computers with NO OS installed or when you want to do the Upgrade. I want to do OSD on only 40 computers not all the 2000 computers inside the collection (hence i dont use mandatory option) in my case

Hi Chaudry, How you manage getthe machine ID onto SCCM? 1. Try to set Boundary in SCCM - AD Default Site (which refer to the site of your AD) or Subnet's 2. Try to get in the Machine ID to SCCM by using Computer Assiocation/Import/Single Machine (MAC Address & Desired Comp. Name)in OSD and point a Collection at SCCM 3. Advertise the TS to particular Collection (whereMAC address & Comp. Name was assign too) 4. Make sure u have enough files in RemoteInstall$\SMSboot\x86 5. Restart WDS and Trivial FTP Services. Enable cmd support on Boot Image - Boot Image x86/Properties/ 6. On the Machine - Select PXE boot option and run it. 7. When WINPE boot press F8 (cmd will prompt). Try to ping your SCCM DP server FQDN - you should see good return result (your WINPE will not reboot until cmd is exited) 8. You also can check the SMSTS.log file to see TS in WINPE (Windows/Temp/SMSTSLog/smsts.log) *** Register your SCCM server FQDN in your DNS and also check your DHCP server have "60 PXEclient" *** Use the right boot image for correct OS Image and machine architure. Good Luck. Muthu

Just Restart "WDS Service" in Services.mscRegards Prabhu

Hi Prabhu do u have any well structured document on the WDS server...Thanks and Regards Deepak

Hi Deepak, Here you go to know more about "WDS" http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/93-windows-deployment-services-wds/ SCCM design is like that you need not to configure WDS for SCCM PXE Service point ,though you configure WDS but system will use WDS (Service) to boot from network that's all then it will contact SCCM server only for approving the clients. (and you need to clear pxe advertised every time in sccm) But if you are using MDT you must configure WDS for network boot and boot image.And there is no option to clear "PXE" for every time here.Regards Prabhu J

This is a general guide on properly setting up and troubleshooting the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr 2007) PXE Service Point. Common errors that are seen at the PXE boot screen when the PXE Service Point is either not configured properly or experiencing problems are the following: PXE-E53: No boot filename received PXE-T01: File not found PXE-E3B: TFTP Error - File not Found PXE-E55 Proxy DHCP Service did not reply to request on port 4011 PXE-T04: Access Violation PXE-E36: Error Received from TFTP Server PXE-M-F Exiting PXE Rom However the error messages can vary depending on the PXE implementation on the client PC. Another common symptom is that the Windows Deployment Services Server (WDS) service will not start. This blog really solve all my PXE issues http://blogs.technet.com/b/configurationmgr/archive/2011/01/05/troubleshooting-the-pxe-service-point-and-wds-in-configuration-manager-2007.aspx

Hi Chaudry, You need to delete the machine record which are showing obsolete status as 'Yes' and afterwards, restart WDS service on server having PXE service point role. Once, WDS service gets restarted successfully, please retry imaging through Pxe boot. Hope it helps!