Server2012R2 & Hyper-v & PXE Boot

[nimrodel]

Hi,

Not sure if this is the correct forum, but I am tearing my hair out with something that should be fairly straightforward.

 

I have 32 new laptops which I need to set up with a whole load of software. Normally, I would set up one of them as a reference machine and use WDS to capture an image and then use answerfiles to deploy that image to the other laptops. However, this time I thought I'd try creating a VM to create the image from, so I used a Win8.1 64bit PC to run Hyper-V and I created a Win 8.1 64bit VM. I loaded all my software, updated Windows and sysprep'd the VM (well, to be honest, I accidentally sysprep'd the physical PC on the first attempt...doh!).

Now had I realised about the differences between Hyper-V Gen1 and Gen2 at the time, I might have opted for Gen1 but I created a Gen2 VM. Of course, there is no need for a legacy Network Adapter so I created a Network Adapter, assigned it to my NIC and set it to be the first boot option.

Sure enough, as I turned on the VM it started to boot from the network and the screen messages showed that it had received an IP address and was downloading the file wdsmgfw.efi file (downloading NBP file...) but it failed after a few minutes with a PXE-E18: Server Response Timeout.

I have spent 2 days googling a solution but nothing seems to work. I have read about EUFI, option 66,67 and all sorts of other things but nothing makes sny difference. Before I give up and rebuild a physical laptop has anyone any idea what I have done wrong??

I should add that physical machines all boot to PXE with no problems. I also created a boot image and a capture image from a the same Win8.1 ISO that I used to create the VM.

 

Any suggestions very welcome!

Thanks

 

Dave

[Joanne]

I am in a similar position in that I am trying to get a VM to PXE boot, but it is having none of it. Won't even get to the deploy / upload image section. Frustrating because I sysprepped it and then I can't get the image to upload! Network driver is set as top boot thingy... anyone halp us@?!!

[nimrodel]

Hi Joanne,

I'm surprised no-one has helped with this. Either everyone has the same problem and no-one knows why, or no-one has the problem!

 

Anyway, I gave up after weeks of trying various settings, and ended re-creating the image but this time choosing Gen 1 instead of Gen 2 and using the Legacy Network Adaptor. This worked fine. Shame because it wasted a lot of time and there is no way to change from Gen 2 to Gen 1 without starting over again from scratch and re-installing the OS and all programs!!

 

Dave

[Joanne]

Hahahahah..... just totally had to re-do my Windows 10 image because the first one wouldn't sysprep. I'll create a new VM and link it to this working ones VHD.

 

Thank you!

[TMODAlpha]

I had this with Hyper-V when testing EFI bootloaders. In the end I had to use VMWare Workstation for the client, which worked perfectly first time. It was even booting to WDS which was hosted on a Hyper-V server. Mental.

[Joanne]

Yeah looks like the Generation 1 thing is the key. Also you can't create a Gen 1 VM and link it to a Gen 2 VHD. That didn't work! Had to start from scratch!