Forcing a One-Time PXE Boot on Dell Clients

Dell pro Jordan Gardner shows us some tricks he's learned to force a PXE boot on Dell clients using the magic of Altiris Deployment Solution and Dell OMCI.

This tip shows how one can use Deployment Solution's system tokens, a run script task, and Dell OMCI to force a one-time PXE boot of Dell client machines.

1. Create a Windows Run Script Task
   
   1. In the DS Jobs pane, right click "New Job"
   2. Name the Job "Force PXE Boot – Dell Clients"
   3. In the Center Pane, add a "Run Script" Task
   4. Paste the following into the "Run this Script" box:

   'vbscript to Force a PXE boot on next boot
   Option Explicit
   Dim WMIobj
   Set WMIobj = GetObject("WinMgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}" & _
                     "//%COMPNAME%/root/Dellomci:Dell_Configuration=" & _
                     Chr(34) & "Configuration" & Chr(34))
   'Set Option to 3 to Force PXE on next boot, value will reset to 4 automatically after boot
   WMIobj.Properties_.Item("ForcePXEonNextBoot").Value = 3
   WMIobj.Put_
    
   

   5. Click "Next"
   6. In the "Client Run Environment" provide Administrative user and credential
   7. Click "Finish"
2. Drag 'n Drop "Force PXE Boot – Dell Clients" job on a Dell Client machine or group of Dell Client machines with OMCI installed.

When this run script job is executed on a Dell client machine the token %COMPNAME% will be substituted with the appropriate computer's name, so you can run it on one or many machines at the same time. When they reboot they will go through the PXE boot process only once. The "ForcePXEonNextBoot" property is automatically reset each time the machine reboots.

NOTE: This functionality will also be a part of the new OMCA 3.0 Dell Client Manager Product, including integration of the Altiris agent with the Dell OMCI agent. DCM will be release at the end Q1 of 2006.