So with deployment of Windows 11

[timbo343]

I've got possibly one last peice of Windows 11 which i'm struggling with.

 

The attached image is showing after MDT deployment just after the image has been pushed down. This happens on a clean / vanilla deployment of Windows 11 Edu 24H2.6 (April 2025).

 

The Smoothwall logs show that it's trying to get to windowsupdate.com to pull down an update.

 

This only happens on physical machines. If i try deployment on a virtual machine I dont get this.

 

The image shows that i can ping all internal IPs and names of devices however the machine will not ping to the outside world.

 

I have firewall and smoothwall access all open for this device's IP address and in smoothwall web proxy there is a rule for this device's IP to completely allow this machine out.

 

Anyone got any ideas?

[FN-GM]

Is the machine in the 172.16.24.x subnet? If so can you ping something that isn't the internet but outside of that subnet? Has the default gateway been set and can you ping that?

[timbo343]

Just now, FN-GM said:

Is the machine in the 172.16.24.x subnet? If so can you ping something that isn't the internet but outside of that subnet? Has the default gateway been set and can you ping that?

 

Yep all internal IPs on that subnet can be pingged including the gateway.

 

It's not specific to one machine as trying other machines gives the same issue.

 

 

[FN-GM]

37 minutes ago, timbo343 said:

 

Yep all internal IPs on that subnet can be pingged including the gateway.

 

It's not specific to one machine as trying other machines gives the same issue.

 

 

 

Can you ping other devices in other subnets?

[timbo343]

Probably not because we have the other VLANs blocked from communicating to the main VLAN which is where this machine is sat.

[FN-GM]

Maybe something in your server VLAN? Your DHCP / DNS?

 

I am trying to figure out where the data is falling over.

 

Maybe do a traceroute?

[timbo343]

I've found out what it is.

 

After the image has been downloaded the machine restarts and drivers are added to the system, the machine restarts again.

 

At that point it's talking to windowsupdate.com to download a cab file. The connection is kept open for a period of time. It turns out I couldn't ping external because the connection during MDT closed. I've now re-imaged the same machine, allowed windowsupdate.com to download the .cab file and installation / deployment completed.

Scrap this, this isn't the issue, it was a coincidence.

[timbo343]

I found this video actually solves the issue but i'm not sure what the issue is or why this happens

 

https://youtu.be/ZpCnr-GWsLE

[timbo343]

Seems like we are being plagued with the "Why did my PC restart" message with no common situation. Last week, a room of 30 machines, half the machines had issues. Same image, same BIOS and settings. Same SSDs. Same drivers.

Today, 4 machines, all the same spec, same image, same damn boxes.. only 1 of the machines imaged via MDT without any issue. God knows what it is!

 

[timbo343]

On 06/06/2025 at 17:07, timbo343 said:

I found this video actually solves the issue but i'm not sure what the issue is or why this happens

 

https://youtu.be/ZpCnr-GWsLE

Whilst on the "Why did my PC Restart?" Screen, The following bypasses this screen.

- Shift + F10 to run Regedit

- Navigate to HKLM > System > Setup.

- We removed the entry from "cmdline" so that it was left with a blank value.

- We changed OOBEInProgress to )

- Closed regedit and run "shutdown /r /f"

The machine rebooted to a windows login screen and we logged in with the local admin account as if it were to continue the MDT process.

Once logged in the MDT task sequence carried on without any issue.

 

Yes it's a pain to have to intervene but at least it's a work around on the machines that have this issue.