[wds] Computer account deleted from AD but somehow WDS server still finds it

[Teth]

This is one of those problems I'm sure somone has had and answered but I can't find it on google because it's too hard to describe.

 

I have a 2 DC 2 file server network with 250ish XP clients. We moved from our old building to our new school recently and took our PCs and servers with us. The new building is a different size and shape so rather than moving PCs room to room we just stacked PCs by model type and filled suites with apropriate numbers of machines.

 

We deleted all machine accounts from AD and then proceeded to build the machines from WDS on a server 2k3 R2 server with the "For unknown clients notify admin and respond after approval" setting. We named 99% of the machines this way and it was all flawless... except 1 machine.

 

1 Dell 745 Low profile system does not request admin approval it instead rebuilds from WDS with its old computer name. I've searched AD for objects with the same name looked through all the OUs and there is no entry for this machine in AD but yet WDS is rebuilding it each time...

 

Where could WDS be finding this computer account info? and how do I kill it?

[Gatt]

Its stored in an MDB file in the \\server\REMINST share afaik, its a ballache to get past this...

I'm surprised WDS actaully let you image the PC.. usually it hangs whilst trying to initiate the PXE loader

There is a WDSUTIL command to flush the whole WDS database - WDSUTIL /Delete-AutoAddDevices /DeviceType:ApprovedDevices but you will prob need to re-auth all your PCs again

 

Have you tried to prestage the computer in AD but creating a computer account and entering the GUID/UUID - hopefully WDS should then correct itself..

 

I had this happen quite a lot so this year all my PCs have been rebuilt using Task Sequences in MDT 2010..

[Teth]

I'm happy enough to clear the database at this point I think. Wouldn't be a huge headache to prestage the machines for next rebuild. Their next build will probably be Win7 which will be major work anyway.

 

I rebuilt it again last night before I left work after flushing caches etc and this morning it is sitting rebuilt as a clone of an existing machine "duplicate network name detected" so it's really not going to do any harm there is obviously something screwy

[Teth]

Had another look at this in the afternoon finally.

 

I did

 

WDSUTIL /Delete-AutoAddDevices /DeviceType:ApprovedDevices

 

and got the error that "No Auto Add devices matched the specified criteria" thinking that a bit weird given that I've built more than 200 machines from this WDS server in the last month I tried the RejectedDevices and PendingDevices parameters too. This would seem to indicate there are no records in my Auto-Add database at all. Of course building this desktop again results in it aquiring a computer name automatically rather than prompting for the administrator to assign it. This time however it has picked up a different name of an existing machine on the network. Starting to think all is not well with my WDS server.