Hi there,
I'm trying to set up a multipurpose PXE environment using WDS for demo purposes and debugging something a customer is trying to do.
There's multiple issues here I'm afraid. One being I'm unable to install Windows via PXE on BIOS systems (works fine with UEFI), the other that I want it to boot more than just Windows and thus
want to work with pxelinux (or ipxe) as well.
Created a VM that has 2008 R2, is a domain controller for it's own domain, runs DHCP (using option 60 thus, not 66/67) and has WDS on it. Imported Windows 10 boot image and install image. Tried
booting a VM over PXE. It loads the initial file but then stops with
File: \Boot\BCD
Status: 0xc0000098
Info: The Windows Boot Configuration Data file does not contain a valid OS entry.
Have the same issue with Windows 7 images. Do note I used a 64-bit ISO in all cases. Should be fine as far as I'm aware, all systems are 64-bit nowadays. My test systems sure are.
This error occurs when using BIOS thus (both physical and VM's). Systems utilizing UEFI (both physical and VM's) boot and install Windows 7 and 10 just fine from it.
Any suggestions on this one? Already removed WDS once and recreated the whole thing. Doesn't make a difference.
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The second issue is with pxelinux. It seems hard to boot this. According to several guides on the internet you should just configure the default boot image to be pxelinux.com. This doesn't work.
Not on BIOS nor UEFI systems. Output from wdsutil does show they're the default:
Boot Program Policy:
Known client PXE prompt policy: OptIn
New client PXE prompt policy: OptIn
Allow N12 for new clients: <Not Applicable>
Architecture discovery: Disabled (it used to be enabled, disabled to see if things would change)
Reset boot program: No
Default boot programs:
x86 - boot\x86\pxelinux.com
x64 - boot\x86\pxelinux.com
ia64 - boot\ia64\bootmgfw.efi
Default N12 boot programs:
x86 - boot\x86\pxelinux.com
x64 - boot\x86\pxelinux.com
ia64 - boot\ia64\bootmgfw.efi
Even though the settings point to pxelinux.com PXE insists on booting wdsnbp.com. Well on BIOS that is, can't actually see the filename flash by on my UEFI systems and they don't boot the same
thing.
Eventually I got fed up trying to get it to work by using the settings and I just move the original wdsnbp.com to wdsnbp.0 and copied pxelinux.0 to wdsnbp.com. I can boot PXElinux now, well, from
BIOS systems at least. Can load WDS by chaining wdsnbp.0, breaks with the same 0x0c0000098 message so I suppose, besides the regular boot error, that didn't break anything.
UEFI systems however still boot directly into WDS. As far as I know ia64 was an architecture by Intel for servers that was hardly used and is dying out, might play with changing those files though.
If anyone has any insights on how to make it boot pxelinux by default (without having to move the regular files out of the way) and why the Windows installation doesn't work with BIOS (it already
didn't before I started modifying files and boot programs - first tried to get that running, errors haven't changed though so I doubt it's getting in the way) it would be much appreciated.
Kind regards,