We had this same problem on our 780's.   Try updating the BIOS to the latest version.  Hopefully this works.  The other thing would be to make sure you have the latest drivers loaded in WinPE.  I don't know what NIC the 980 users off-hand but I'd try that also.

SteveC,

The typical response to this issue is to update the BIOS on the Dell computer from Dell's support website.  Following this, update WinPE's NIC drivers using the most current network drivers from Dell's website.  However, I've also seen it where Dell is out of date by several revisions, so you may want to go straight to Intel.com to do your driver update in WinPE.

Does this help?

Thanks for the response.  I just got back to this.  I have the latest bios, and will try the latest drivers from intel.

Tried the latest drivers and that didnt seem to help.  Also, this model of machine seems to miss the multicast portion of the pxe boot most of the time.

I'm having the exact same issue.  Takes forever to move on from TFTP to the 'Loading RAMDISK' screen...then it just sits there.  I guess it may complete in a few hours at best, but that's just not going to work at all.  This has loaded with everything previously within 30 seconds.

Even stranger, we've had batches of 980's come in a few months ago without any issues, so it's something that they recently changed.

If anyone has any insight, please let us know!

I just looked at our older batch. They had an i7 chipset, whereas the new ones have an i3, though I can't imagine that would make a difference.  Other than that they're identical...EXCEPT the BIOS on the old ones is A04.  The BIOS on the ones just delivered:  A05.

Now, Dell has a version A06 BIOS released on 12/26...so that may resolve the issue?  Otherwise i'll try and roll back.

This sounds specific to the model, but make sure you don't have PXE logging anything. That can cause delays.

It's not specific to the model per-se (Optiplex 980) because we've had 2 batches of these come in a few months ago and there were no issues.

This new batch has major issues.  I've tried 2 different machines and both of them have the same problem. I upgraded one to the A06 BIOS released on 12/26, but it didn't make a difference.  Same incredible slowness.  After leftting it go for about 1 hour, I got a single bar of progress loading the RAMDISK.

If anyone has any suggestions let me know.  They have the same NIC as the old ones (Intel 82578DM), so I don't believe thats an issue either.

We can image other models just fine (745, 755, 960, even the original batches of 980s). 

Downgraded to A04 which was the version on the previous set of machines.  No luck.  I really have no idea what changed...but it has rendered these things unusable.  No luck booting with WinPe or even DOS.

We encountered this problem too with the 980s with various PXE applications/menus, and after doing some research of our own (refer link below which sums the problem up the best), we followed up with the DELL Bios research team and a new BIOS revision is being released which will solve this issue.

There are 2 solutions:

1) Downgrade to Optiplex 980 BIOS revision A01 - this BIOS revsision uses older Intel PXE code which does not exhibit the problem.  However you may encounter other issues such as problems booting from USB flash and failure to recognise the latest CPUs.  Bios revisions A02 up to and including A06 all present with the PXE issue as described above and should be avoided if you trying to overcome the PXE "slowness" problem.

2) Upgrade to BIOS to revision A07 - this is currently in beta and will be released soon.  This bios revision also supports later CPU models which BIOS A01 does not recognise.

The following link provides further information:

http://clientui-kb.symantec.com/kb/index?page=content&id=TECH122378&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1296573542697

Hoping this helps someone else as it gave us endless headaches until we tried A01.

I don't know if you tried this or if you can try this but can you run WinPE from a USB drive and how fast does that run?   When we had this problem with our 780's (our problem was the bios version), the usb flash WinPE loaded normally but Altiris wouldn't. 

I've been harassing Dell for the last week trying to get on the beta for A07.  At first, they didn't admit that there was an issue, or that there was even a beta version of the BIOS, but after pointing them to this thread as well as another documenting the issue, they admitted there was a known problem but still wouldn't give me the version to test (even though I had machines I was going to send back since they weren't image-able).

I finally received an email yesterday that they were going to get me the beta...though, I still have no idea when that will be.   Needless to say, this runaround over the past week has made us look into other options for workstations.  It has been frustrating to say the least...especially since this has been an issue for multiple versions of the BIOS on this model.

Confirmed that reverting to A01 bios fixes the issue for now.  However, I do get a bios warning about the processor not being supported (currently I5 intel).  Looking forward to the A07 beta.  Thanks to all who have been hammering Dell for a fix.

I finally managed to get a copy of the beta A07, and it did not fix the issue.  After reporting this to Dell, they started asking what kind of network switch we were on, what kind of pxe server, etc. 

Needless to say, we have 6 other Dell models, 3 Lenovo and 2 IBM that all image without issue.

Considering A01 works speed-wise, i'd be willing to bet quite a hefty sum that this is an issue with a single model and BIOS version, but I seem to have a hard time convincing them of that.  We've already ordered a Fujitsu demo and will be ordering an HP demo as well.  This has been a frustrating 2 weeks of this...

A07 final is out on Dell's website.  Perhaps I will have better luck with it.

Would be interesting to see if this resolves the issue. We're just about to get in a 980 for testing here... ;-)

and see if it's any different than the Beta one they sent the other day.

It's the same as the Beta one they sent me, so if anyone else has any luck with it, please let me know!

no luck.  this blows.

any chance there is something we can do on the PXE side of things to fix this instead of relying on Dell?

Ok, just talked to one of the guys at Dell, and it turns out that if any of the boot option names are over 18 characters in length, it causes this issue.

I had one that was 20 characters.   I reduced it, and now it's booting normally.  Anyone else care to try?

...just checked, it still  has to be A07 though.  I pulled another out of the box (had A05) and it did the same slow-speed PXE boot.   PITA to update these all manually, but at least they work.  If anyone orders any of these, make sure they ship with A07!

I just updated another from A05 to A07, and it's having the same issue as before.   back to the drawing board...

it seems to work normally now.  this is so strange...

it's inconsistent at best.  sometimes it'll boot normally, sometimes it won't.  doesn't seem like a solid fix at this point.

I confirmed something that Steve had seen.  Adding a NIC into one of the PCI/PCI-e slots allows it to boot normally.   Strangely enough, I dug up an old Dell NIC from 2002 and it worked like a champ every time.  Of course, this can't be the end all solution...i've been passing this information to a Dell tech so hopefully we'll have a resolution at some point.

those of you with this problem, continue to monitor this page.  I sent them a picture of the makeshift setup i had with the internal NIC and informed them that this crazy setup was working...so, until they get the issue sorted out, I asked them to send me a PCI or PCI-e NIC to test.   They're going to send one out and i'll test it.   Assuming it works and doesn't have the same issue, they're going to send me out 4 more for the other machines I have.

I'll update with my results here, and assuming it works, you can then start contacting your Dell reps and request the same thing until they get the issue resolved.  :-)