Troubleshooting PXE Boot Errors with ADS Clients

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It can be very frustrating getting a client machine to boot to ADS if things don't run perfectly and you aren't familiar with any of the troubleshooting methods. I thought it would be a good idea to go over some of the more common causes of PXE boot errors on the client machines and ideas on how to troubleshoot them.

PXE E53: No Boot FileName Recieved

and/or

PXE E55:ProxyDhcp service did not reply to request on port 4011

The first thing you need to check for is if the DHCP server is hosted on the same box that hosts ADS.

1. If DHCP and ADS are hosted on the same box you would need to configure both DHCP and ADSPXE service to be co-located on this box. For this purpose ADSDhcpconfig.wsf tool is provided along with ADS install files. you can locate this tool under %program files%Microsoft ADSbin

In order to co-locate ADS and DHCP services you need to run following on command prompt

adsdhcpconfig /add

Above command will give an output stating the ADSPXE and DHCP services are now configured to be co-located. Notice the DHCP scope after running this command. This commands enables scope option#60 and adds PXEClient string to DHCP scope.

If you are planning to move DHCP services to a different box and need to disable the co-location you can run the same tool again with remove switch.

adsdhcpconfig /remove

2. In case of cross subnet communication you need to ensure that the connecting router or switches have IPHelper enabled.

3. Ensure that there is no firewall blocking the port on ADS server.

4. Check if the client machine is added to ADS Console and you've taken control of the device.

5. If you've changed the IP of ADS server you can get this error message. You can contact Microsoft Support for getting ADSBind.exe tool to configure the ADS server to use the new IP.

6. If you've multiple NIC cards on ADS server, changing NIC card settings may leave stale entries in registry binding ADS services to previous MAC address. ADSBind.exe is your friend in such a situation.

More information on ADSBind.exe

On the controller run this command and reboot the controller:

adsbind.exe /A /B:a

This will set the services to the current IP address. Check the event log to make sure all services startup successfully

Note: If the ADS controller has multiple network cards its recommended to bind ADS to a single NIC only. The command you should use is:
adsbind.exe /N /B:a /ip:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

7. If none of the above resolve your issue, collect Netmon trace while reproducing the error.

You can download Netmon from below link https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=18b1d59d-f4d8-4213-8d17-2f6dde7d7aac&DisplayLang=en

Author: Nitin Mishra
Technical Lead
Microsoft - Windows Server - Enterprise Platforms Support - Core team (Setup, Cluster and Performance)