Deployment Solution

Hi,

I have several clients who boot to WinPE at startup while they have no tasks waiting for them...

We recently upgraded from 6.9 to 7.1, their clients were upgraded too (and they're available int he 7.1 console). Their NIC is their primary boot device This happens every time they boot. 

What could be the cause for this?

-Walter-

Hi check in Settings > Deployment > Pxe Server configuration.

is Respond to unknown computers checked?

no, it has been unchecked a while back. the option "respond to predefined computers" is turned on and it seems that those clients were added to the predefined computer list.

how did they end up there? There are 114 computers int hat list none of them were added by me. 

To fix your immediate problem, a Reboot to Production task will fix those computers from booting into PXE. Additionally, you can delete all the SBS files in the \\sbsserver\deployment\Task Handler\SBS\SBSStore folder except for the *-client.sbs, *-image.sbs, and initialPXEConfigPath.sbs files. There's an .SBS file created as a receipt for each computer you boot into PXE.

How to stop this problem from occurring at all? Not sure on that one. See my thread here, I asked a very similar question to yours.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/ds-71-reboot-production-job-after-imaging-reboots-automation-intermittently

FYI - You can also delete all files in the SBSStore folder, then restart PXE services. The 3 files mentioned above will recreate automatically. A Symantec support tech told me that we can run into problems if this folder fills up with a ton of SBS file receipts. Unfortunately, I've had this problem even when I didn't have many .SBS files in the folder.

Deleting files in here does nothing, well, other than clean it up and possibly free disk space.  Please do not get confused with cleaning this folder and troubleshooting problems.  These files are purely historical.  Deleting them is like trying to fix a problem by deleting the log files.  It wont work.

There are a few things probably that happened here all in concert.

1) when we do an AD import and/or network discovery, and computer discovered that is NOT managed will become a predefined computer.  Known issue.  I've actually been just talking with Dev about this issue today.  We don't have an excellent work-around for that issue, which is why I'm pushing on it.

2) IF you had respond to predefined computers checked, then it would do what you described.

3) SBS server service (which responds to PXE boot requests) doesn't ever "forget" something, but has to be updated by an actual request from the SMP.  IF it is told to respond one way to a computer, it will keep responding that way until told otherwise.  OR until it's restarted.  This becomes important for instance when you delete a computer in the console.  The SBS server service doesn't just "forget" about that computer and stop managing it, so you have to restart the SBS server service to get it to ask for a new list of computers which will not, at that point, contain the deleted computer.

4) It is a known issue that sometimes the SBS server service will treat "known" computers or managed computers as "unknown" because we only send, by default, a list of known computers to the SBS server that reside in the same subnet as the SBS server.  We have a KB that discusses how to modify the query that sends this result to include all computers assigned to the task server, OR include all computers in the environment.

Again, do NOT concern yourself with deleting those historical files.  You can of course at any time do so - it makes no difference to us, but it wont solve any problems at all.

Finally, please visit http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO55859 for more information on how to get around some of these issues.  That's an excellent KB to bookmark.

Hi Thomas,

thanks for the clarification. That's an excellent post and describes our issue exactly. (only one remark: the link isn't working, but  now I know what the issue is I also know how to resolve it)

Would it be a good suggestion to have the _Netboot services restarted every night or so?

-Walter-

My apologies for giving bad information. I'm pretty sure I received that info from a Symantec support tech, but whatever. If it doesn't help, it doesn't help.