Hello everyone, I have one for the record books here. I am having a very hard time building a working windows deployment server on every server that I build.
MAIN ISSUE - PXE booting takes about one minute to boot to the BOOT MENU. Here is a video that I have recorded and posted for visual verification.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Yw_ynXy1I
MAIN ISSUE (cont.) - This is constant. I have built over 10 servers and found the same problem on all of them.
BUILD TYPES - I have tried building with a ton of different servers Dell, HP, IBM. I have changed RAM and Hard Drives to prevent from using defective hardware. I have even purchased brand new hard drives and the problem persists. I have tried using internal NICS and purchased PCI\PCIe NICS from the store. Still same issue. This issue is so constant, I can't convince myself that the issue is hardware.
The operating system I am using is Server 2012 R2 Standard (w/GUI). I install the operating system (have tried both USB and DVD); install active directory, DNS, DHCP, and WDS; configure the WDS and that's it. I do not install anything else.
ENVIRONMENT - I use a closed environment. The only time I connect to the internet it through a firewall-ed network to install the required server roles. The closed environment consists of this below
[Server]-----(CAT5e WIRE)-----[SWITCH]-----(CAT5e WIRE)-----[Test Computer]
The test computer is simply a standard desktop computer with the capability to PXE boot. Either Optiplex GX620 or Optiplex 755 depending on which one I use. Both test computers function fine on the server I build last year. I have tried changing the switch and both cat5e wires. I have even made the cables myself, but to no avail.
FIRMWARE - I have updated the firmware on the NICS and the BIOS for the servers. I have tried downgrading the NIC firmware and the BIOS for the servers. I have upgraded/downgraded the firmware on the RAID controllers. I have installed it using Raid-0, Raid-1, Raid-1+HS, Raid-5, Raid-5+HS, and even without RAID.
The only thing left I have not tried is different installation media. I only have access to Server 2012 R2 Standard Evaluation ISO from Microsoft. I have tried re-downloading it and even made a new account to download a "NEW" copy of the ISO. Once it is installed, I have the product key to activate it. I have tried it activated and it didn't help anything.
Well, that's about it. I have tried googling "Slow PXE booting" and "Slow WDS server" and a hundred versions of the question. I have tried all the fixes: Hotfixes, Changing tftp size, downloading SCCM or MDT, disabling multicast, changing duplex settings, disabling windows firewall. If anyone has any idea, I will be more than happy to try it immediately and get back to you.
Thanks!