Deployment Solution

Hello,

We have two PXE servers. DS server and one PXE server in remote office.

Clients at the remote office are unable to receive boot menu during PXE boot and finally receive error: "PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent"

Status of PXE server in remote office in PXE Config Utility show green and services are running.

- "Enable response to request from computers not in the DS database" in enabled
- "Enable response to computers with active DS job assignments only" is NOT enabled
- We have MAC filter in use, but MAC address of clients are in place

I can update my PXE configuration and save it.

in remote office PXE server installation folder f:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\PXE\Images folder I can see MenuOption131.tmp folder.

I tried following workarounds to get rid of .tmp folder:

- Stopped PXE Manager service on DS server, deleted .tmp folder from remote PXE server and started PXE Manager service again

- Deleted .tmp folder from remote PXE server and saved my WinPE managed boot disk configuration and saved update.

I'm not sure if this .tmp folder is related to why my clients cannot receive boot menu in remote office, but this indicates that there's problem updating PXE configuration.

Thanks already for your help!!

I'd start with a wireshark trace to be sure you can even get to the PXE server.  There are several articles about doing this.  But the error you're seeing "appears" to be related to not getting a response from PXE.  Sorry, I'm not really the pro here.  If I WAS in fact hitting the PXE server but not getting a reply, then I'd worry about the TMP folder.  I am almost positive the tmp folder is used by WAIK when building the image, though why that would be on the remote PXE server I'm not sure.  It should only be local.

Anyway, that's a thought at least.  Have you already resolved this?  Is so, let us know how.

Thanks!

Hi Thomas,

Appreciate your response, thank you.

I got some new information for this case: Client computer in fact receives boot menu from PXE server, if user hits F8 during countdown which comes during network boot. So PXE server actually responds back to client. But if user selects 'WinPE managed' from boot menu, it takes couple of seconds and then error "PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent" and boot resumes.

It looks to me, that WinPE image, on this PXE server, is messed up. Is my only option to fix this to reinstall PXE Manager and PXE servers from scratch?

You could try to manually replicate the WinPE image from the working server to the destination.  This is 6.9, right?  If the menu is already there, a manual replication may work.  Not 100% positive on that frankly, but you might try simply replicating the WIM file that's "broken" into the images folder.

I'll see what else I can find.  If this is DS 7.1, the solution is different.

Thanks!

Hi Thomas,

I think I found where the problem is.

First, size of \PXE\Images\MenuOption131 folder is 0KB. On other PXE server this is 132MB.

Secondly, folder structure is complete different in MenuOption131 folder. On problem-PXE server these folders can be found from \PXE\Images\MenuOption131\X86PC:

Program Files

ProgramData

Users

Windows

Same folder on our working PXE server have folders like boot, sources...

Did I mentioned that we just upgraded to WinPE 2.1 from 1.6. It was working back then with 1.6.

Sounds like it failed to replicate.  Again, you MIGHT be able to manually copy the files from one server to that one, but I'm not 100% sure it'll work.  In the PXE Configuration utility you should see that the status of that server is not updated.  It might even show it as offline or something.  I'm suspicious that there's something else going on that's probably bigger than just this menu option, but my 6.9 skills are very rusty now (I started using 7.1 about 1.5 yrs back and have never looked back - never had time!).

Check the status tab of the PXE Configuration utility and see what you find there, and if you see errors, look them up.

Anyone else know where to look for this?

Hi Thomas,

I managed to resolve this on my own.

First, I redirected all my existing jobs to NOT use WinPE automation. Next, I removed 'WinPE managed' boot menu option from PXE config. I also need to delete MenuOptionXXX folder and MenuOptionXXX.tmp folder from remote office PXE server.

Finally, I created new WinPE managed boot menu option to Shared Configuration and local re-directed WinPE option for remote office PXE server. Voilá!

Thanks Thomas for your help.