RIS problems with PXE, TFTP.... file not found errors

[J.R.]

Hello all-

We are experiencing the following symptoms, which are
discussed in Microsoft KB article 222177.
That article says to replace three files (ntldr,
Startrom.com & Startrom.n12)
and the problem should go away, but it doesn't.

I have also tried re-installing RIS to no avail.

When a PXE machine boots it connects to the server (Win2K,
same server for both RIS and DHCP)
and reports IP, DHCP and Gateway Addresses... then it
reports:

PXE-T01: File not found
PXE-E3B: TFTP Error - File not Found

The setup and install of RIS was done according to an
article reprinted on Microsoft's site called "Installing
Windows 2000 on Workstations with Remote Installation
Services", an excerpt from the book "Mastering Windows
2000 Server"

I have tried the PXE boot from a couple of different
machines on the network with the same results, so it does
not appear to be workstation-related.

Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Guest]

Okay- I got down to the bottom of this issue for anyone else who has experienced this frustration. I traced down every aspect of RIS and TFTP I could using logs and network monitor until it finally occured to me to try using TFTP manually to see what was going on with TFTP specifically.

However-- I have yet to come up with a "permanent" fix.

It seems that (on my server) TFTP does not want to default to using the directory specified in the Registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tftpd\Parameters\

Name: Directory
Type: REG_SZ


No matter what I set this key to, I found that when I would use TFTP to manually "PUT" a file on the server, it would end up in the WINT/System32/wins folder. No wonder the files were not getting found by the PXE boot process.

I copied the OSChooser folder to the WINT/System32/wins folder and voila! no more errors on my RIS clients.

Now to move to the next step and see if I can actually get the rest to work!!

P.S. If anyone has an idea on how to get that registry key to properly register I'd love to hear it.

 

[absterge]

Just FYI, I was having this same issue with WDS Legacy/RIS on a 2003 SBS SP1 box, and after a wireshark analysis, I discovered that the boot files the client was looking for as specified in the registry were x86\pxeboot.com and x86\pxeboot.n12. I changed the two regkeys for Default and N12 at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WDSServer\Providers\WDSPXE\Providers\BINLSVC\BootPrograms\x86
to startrom.com and startrom.n12 respectively. Magically delicious. Pfa.