Kernel Confusion

Today’s task was to upgrade an existing SCCM R2 SP1 installation to service pack 2. I checked the site status before I started: everything was “green”. The prerequisite check was “ok”, despite two minor warnings. So I went on and all SP2 tasks finished successfully. Well then, I thought, let’s check the existing OS deployment tasks to see if it’s still working.

MP Error Log

We set up a VM and tried booting into PXE… with no response of the server. Restarting the WDS service didn’t do the trick. So I dug a little deeper and took a look at the logs in %programfiles%\Microsoft Configuration Manager\Logs. Interesting files to look at: mpcontrol.log and pxecontrol.log (use SMS TRACE to

PXE Error Log

view these logs, if you don’t have any other preference). The PXE log didn’t tell me anything interesting, it even logged successful self-tests! Funny, because the log in the ConfigMgr-Console told me otherwise: the PXE service was not responding. It also told me the Management Port was giving a HTTP 500 error.

After a lot of rebooting and error-hunting I came up with a “solution” to this problem. It seemed the service pack installation didn’t properly update the PXE and management point and caused the unresponsiveness of both service roles.

WARNING: You may already know it, but just to be clear on this: the Configuration Manager takes some time to do it’s work. So be calm and watch the application log for MSI events, stating a successful (de)installation before rebooting. This is true for both the ConfigMgr Roles and Client Agent.

I did the following to solve it:

• Removed the Management Point Role (in ConfigMgr)
• Reboot
• Reinstalled the Management Point Role
• Removed the ConfigMgr Client Agent (ccmsetup /uninstall)
• Removed the PXE Role (in ConfigMgr)
• Reboot
• Removed the WDS Role (Windows Server)
• Reboot
• Reinstalled the WDS Server Role (no configuration after that of course)
• Reinstalled the PXE Role
• Reinstalled the CCM Client Agent
• Reboot

Yes I know: lots of lots of reboots. You may skip them if you dare, please drop me a line if it work anyway.

After that, all components went to green in the system state view and the PXE service started to respond as expected.