PXE boot not responding at all for Acer Travelmate X3310

[evasion]

Got a batch of new Travelmate X3310 by Acer and they only have UEFI boot option in bios.

Using WDS on 2012R2 server and this laptop just does not respond at all when booting into option "Network boot - IPV4 mac address ".

I see no response on the screen which gives me no clues.

Other computers, UEFI boot or not have no problems, PE boot image is either 64 bit Win10 LTSC.

I have injected relevant drivers into image, regenerated and replaced, but that is not even necessary because I cannot get to the stage when choice of PE boot images is shown - there is no DHCP message at all.

At least one should see DHCP message on pxe boot screen but nothing comes up at all.

I have tested second generation of hyper-v VM (UEFI) which boots into pxe ipv4 just fine and loads relevant 64bit PE image to start with.

So much for diagnostics but I am positive I have batch of Acer Travelmate X3310 M laptops with corrupt/flawed bios firmware.

Both DHCP and WD/PXE server on the same vlan as laptops. No issue with other UEFI or legacy re-imaging. More than 500 devices re-imaged no problems.

It would be nice to have updated bios but I have already tried it and could see no difference.

Edited October 10, 2019 by evasion

[evasion]

I can only see this in WDS debug log and I can see that relevant mac address does get valid IP address in DHCP server.

 

WDS DEbug log:

----------------------------

 

[WDSServer/WDSPXE/WDSDCPXE] DeviceId:{13D0C886-4534-42D7-B0E1-540CD3B7A72B}, HardwareAddress:7C-D3-0A-80-33-C9, WdsArch:4

 

ID 32769

 

[WDSServer] Device not found: [7C-D3-0A-80-33-C9] [{13D0C886-4534-42D7-B0E1-540CD3B7A72B}]; applying default policy.

 

ID 16385

[evasion]

Asked by Acer to upgrade to "UEFI PXE" support !

Well I tested UEFI boot in both VMWAre VM and Hyper-V VM environment and see no issue booting to pxe.

[evasion]

USB boot not working either. Created bootable UEFI usb stick (Win10LTSC ISO) and cannot boot from any options in bios. Worst bios seen ever. Removed secure boot and tried to boot using windows boot manager because ipv4 doe not function. No way.

Acer took laptops to service centre and did not see a problem. When I asked to come over and see how they re-image them - no reply. Stuck with 12 laptops for more than 2 months. Useless support for useless product. Never ever will buy from Acer!

[evasion]

update: usb boot with PE media is working, if secure boot is disabled in bios.

[glen_j]

Just a thought, but do you have spanning tree enabled on your network? Might be worth turning it off for the network point you are using to image as this can prevent devices from PXE booting.

[evasion]

ports used for imaging are portfast setting and spanning tree does not prevent other 500 plus machines to pxe boot uefi or not.

[evasion]

It transpired some of the Acer laptops from the same batch had corrupt bios. Others did pxe boot off WDS 2012R2 in uefi mode no problem.

[evasion]

Well, this is what I meant by "corrupt bios". Only 2 out of 12 in this batch were able to pxe boot on wds server. Next week, even these 2 did not pxe boot any more. I thought I had a dream for a short while.

Today, I recorded the pxe boot sequence and there it was: error flashed so quickly I could only see it in frame by frame playback. One single frame displayed PXE-E16 : No offer received.

1.25th of a second to display error message. What kind a bios this is?

Acer will now have to explain.

[evasion]

To clarify what "corrupt bios" means:

 

- hdd mode changes from AHCI to RST/Optane behind password protected bios, twice so far

- bios unlocks password protection by itself and changes HDD mode as above

- laptop won't boot (reboot loop) unless reset is performed (pin hole button), sometimes it takes 3 resets to make it boot

- laptops won't pxe boot except on a nice day in October when only 2 of them did boot couple of times, but never again

- students are avoiding to use this model because all other laptops are more reliable

- Acer only want them sent back for testing and they just come back with factory OS loaded, and no problem found (of course customer must have issues with their imaging setup)

- no other desktops or laptops including UEFI bios have pxe boot issue (PXE-E16 : No offer received)

Has anyone else had such grief with this model Acer TMX3310 ?

Edited December 12, 2019 by evasion

[oododkodkdo]

Have you checked the CMOS is in there and tried to replace it to see a difference?

[evasion]

it is already on latest version.

[evasion]

All issues resolved after updating drivers in PE boot image and MDT as well. Intel RST with Optane drivers were required. Boot image regenerated and replaced, bios set to default value (hdd mode = RST with Optane), pxe boot works as expected.

Problem was that while it was possible to re-image these laptops using hdd mode = AHCI with existing drivers in MDT, laptops would only be good for a couple of days, pretty unstable, defaulting to RST hdd mode randomly, behind password protected bios which was strange.

No more pxe errors (no offer received), no need to use usb stick to boot. I never expected driver updates to impact pxe boot in this way.

Edited December 18, 2019 by evasion

[Aprice]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread,

 

Just found this after an entire day of trying to work out why I couldn't get these to work, unfortunately its a newish school with everything Acer ARGGHHH!!!

 

Trawling though logs thinking it was a SCCM problem, and every device here being Acer was exhibiting the same problem apart from the VMs which added to the confusion.

 

I don't suppose anyone knows if the SCCM driver packs on the Acer website have the fixed drivers in?

 

Thanks,

 

Alex