Atheros - WDS - Headache

[Mr_Jiminy]

I'm experiencing problems getting an old batch of Toshiba laptops, with Atheros NICs, to talk to a WDS server.

 

All other devices; Dell laptops, OptiPlex PC's, Lenovo PC's connect fine. All of which are running Realtek NICs (I believe).

 

The only thing to change, is the instance of WDS is now running on a 2012 R2 VM.

 

Any clues or experiences of similar dismay?!

[Mr_Jiminy]

I think I've found the answer.

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/o-s-deployment/124525-toshiba-c50-laptops-will-not-boot-pxe-2.html

[synaesthesia]

Always had various troubles with Atheros wireless kit ranging from it not liking anything with WPA security (going back a bit) mostly in Toshiba laptops to dodgy generic MAC addresses (like 00:00:00:00:00) being encoded in them so the likes of WDS/SCCM refuse to run a task sequence as it's not an unknown computer. Glad you've found an answer to that one though! Last issue I remember having with those ended up in buying a batch of 30 Intel wireless cards to put in laptops and binning the Atheros rubbish!

[Michael]

The Toshiba C50 will boot off USB flash, but that's about it. It won't do Optical or PXE boot.

[Mr_Jiminy]

The Toshiba C50 will boot off USB flash, but that's about it. It won't do Optical or PXE boot.

 

Michael it did work following the instruction provided by 'Tom'. See the the thread link I provided.

 

 

You can specify options 66 and 67 on your main DHCP Scope and force it to work - set option 066 to your WDS Server IP address/FQDN and 067 with the following string "\boot\x86\wdsnbp.com". this will work for x32 boot images (win7 or win8) on wds 2008 and 2012. We have deployed win7 x32 onto ours quite happily.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Mr_Jiminy

[Michael]

That's good to know, but definitely an oversight on Toshiba's part

[FragglePete]

I too gave up with our Toshiba's boot of PXE - just used a USB stick built with Rufus with the boot image .iso. Just rebuilt 40 of them last week.

 

Watch for the Wireless drivers if they are the 946x as the Windows 10 drivers don't seem to use 5Ghz. Forcing older 8.1 drivers onto them got them off 2.4Ghz and on to 5Ghz and all the issues we were having disappeared.

 

Pete