WDS and some laptops not getting ip...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:53:55 Z

First, I hope this question is in the right place.

I have been running WDS for quite some time, with not many issues. Recently some of my DELL Latitude E4300 seem not to get an ip address after 'wpeinit'. After typing my "domain admin" credentials, I get the following message:
A connection to the deployment share (\\WDSServer\Distribution$) could not be made. The deployment will not proceed.

I searched around and I found several links to modify the startnet.cmd script , which I did. I modified the .wim and .iso file located on X:\Distribution\Boot path, but it appears that this isn't working for me. As soon as I try to execute another image job, the laptop never gets an ip. Also, the commands that are supposed to execute before 'wpeinit' never come up on the command line screen either.

Basically, this issue seems to only happen with these laptops, so I don't know if I need to 'inject' new drivers or something like that.

Thanks!

WDS and some laptops not getting ip...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:02:11 Z

Hi,

I suggest trying steps below:

1) Copy your NIC drivers to media that you can use to access the drivers from within WinPE.

2) Boot WinPE.

3) Manually load the network driver, and then verify that it is the correct driver.

To verify:

a. At a command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

drvload driver.inf

Please note that driver.inf is the name of the third-party network driver.

You have to specify the full path and the name of the driver. For example, if driver.inf is on a CD, and the CD drive is drive D, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

drvload.exe d:\ Folder \ driver.inf

b. Type wpeutil InitializeNetwork , and then press ENTER.

c. To verify network connectivity, type ipconfig /all .

Do you have an IP address? If not, it is probably you are using a wrong NIC driver.

Please obtain the latest NIC driver from the following site:

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&ServiceTag=&SystemID=LAT_E4300&os=WLH&osl=en&catid=&impid=

Please make sure you choose the collect operating system on the page.

Then please refer to Step 3 and 4 in the following article to inject the NIC driver to your boot image.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923834/en-us

Hope it helps.

Tim Quan - MSFT

WDS and some laptops not getting ip...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:36:09 Z

Tim,

Thank you very much for your reply. Actually your suggestions fixed my issue.