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K2000 - How to Deny PXE Boot after initial Successful PXE Boot

Hello,

We have recently purchased the K2000 and are trying to setup a Windows 7 Deployment using scripted install, and we are close to completion. We are going into the PC's to install to, and changing the primary boot to PXE instead of a temporary PXE boot because we are currently going through a transition/acquisition phase in the company and have to re-image every PC in the business. It is easier to just touch each PC to change the primary boot to PXE, shutting them down until they are all done, then booting each up to do batch installs, easier monitoring. Is there a way inside of the Kace appliance that will deny a PXE boot at the PXE boot screen after the initial successful PXE boot? This would help in the process of deploying these installs as the PC has to reboot numerous amount of times, and not having to press escape at each PXE boot attempt afterwards would be beneficial.

Thanks


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Answers (4)

Posted by: SMal.tmcc 10 years ago
Red Belt
3

If your workstations are dells, you can change the PXE boot to hdd first as a post install task via the cctk.  And use the k1000 to change the boot back to pxe first when needed via cctk.

We do a WOL, push k1000 script to the needed machines, force an update, and the machines take off and do the assigned task in the k2000.  It Staff shows up about 1-2 hours later(time depends on how many rooms are imaging), the machines are joined to the domain and logged in waiting to get pushed any other needed software and then deepfreeze.

We push a 17-25 gig image to 30-100 machines at one time so this causes the image time to vary, we usually just check the image deploy log to see when they finish.

k1000 task:

K2000 post bat

Posted by: mpace 10 years ago
Red Belt
2

Follow SMal's advice and use CCTK to manipulate the BIOS boot order settings or define Boot Actions for all of your systems to "Boot From Local Hard Drive" with the number of times to do it set to 0. This will still initiate a PXE boot on the client end but unless the end user is looking very closely it will just look like Windows loaded normally without network interaction. Then the next time you want to push out a deployment, modify the Boot Action for a particular machine to deploy your SI as the first action, and then Boot from Hard Drive as the second action (set to 0 again).

Posted by: nheyne 10 years ago
Red Belt
0

How long does your PXE menu display for?  Ours is 5 seconds so a PXE boot only adds about 10 seconds total to the bootup procedure.


Comments:
  • Our PXE bootup once booting into the PXE boot environment is completely automated. A script initializes after it retrieves the boot environment from the K2000 that bypasses the boot menu and automatically selects and executes the scripted install for our image that we are deploying. I want to be able to do something like SCCM can do and deny a reconnect of the computer to the PXE boot process on the K2000 after it has retrieved the initial package. My ideas were that it would begin the scripted install, add to some sort of inventory, and then when the computer reboots to finish installing Windows 7, it would then deny the PXE connection due to it already executing an active scripted install. Our issue lies in when the install reboots to complete installation tasks, we have to tell it to escape the PXE boot so that it may proceed with normal Windows 7 and scripted reboots without trying to boot back into the K2000. We're trying to achieve a complete "no-touch" deployment process after configuring the PC to boot into PXE. - MetaITMark 10 years ago
    • You can do a form of this with boot actions, where you can define a certain number of PXE boots, in this case just one. It's not exactly what you're describing above, but you would basically set the boot order of the machines to hard drive instead of PXE and define a boot action for the scripted install. - nheyne 10 years ago
      • You can do this from the K2000? I know that when we go to deploy to the PC, we select the first and next boot actions within the boot actions area for that PC. That setting will override the boot settings on the PC itself?

        Edit: I just attempted this: setting the boot order back to hard drive, then setting the boot actions in the K2000, the computer booted regularly without booting into the KBE. Did I miss a detail? - MetaITMark 10 years ago
    • I have not looked too deeply into this particular feature because our WAN blocks WOL so I can't utilize it. Maybe someone else can answer this better. - nheyne 10 years ago
    • do you also own a k1000? or what some similar method to push to machines? - SMal.tmcc 10 years ago
Posted by: MetaITMark 10 years ago
Senior White Belt
0

Hello Everyone,

Thank you all for your help. We were able to figure it out yesterday using boot actions. We found out that our scripted install was using the wrong default KBE, so we were having to create 2 boot actions for every deploy before, where one was to load the right KBE, and then to load the scripted install. After remembering to change the default KBE under the general settings, we were able to just put the scripted install as the first boot action, then to boot to the harddrive as the second boot action, and it resolved all of our problems. Thank you very much for your help!

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