After a PXE reboot and loading of the boot image, the system is not able to connect to the OSDepot network share. It either stops without an error message after "Net Logon" or even crashes with an "EMM386 has detected error #12" message.

Due to incompatibilities between NIC Adapters, System BIOS and Preboot Environment (PXE) we have observed some cases where the staging process under PXE did not work.

It seems that the universal NDIS driver, PXE is using by default causes the problem. This driver does not support vendor specific implementations; it can only handle standard PXE calls, which may not be fully implemented in some network devices products.

Beginning with version 6.4 Columbus addresses this problem and allows you to use native NDIS drivers with PXE.

• Add a new registry entry (String Value) in HKLM\SOFTWARE\BrainWare\Columbus\6\OS Management\StagingParams
  NativeNDISDrivers=1

The next time a client reboots with PXE the OS Deploy Agent creates a new directory under ..\Columbus\Infrastructure\PXETemplates based on the name of your NIC Adapters. If no NIC Adapter Inventory information is provided from the vendor, the first 6 characters (the vendor code) of the MAC address will be used.

The following example shows the new directory "000e7f" for a Broadcom adapter. When the name of the network card device can be retrieved from the SMB Bios, the folder name would become "BroadcomNetXtremeEtherlink.." or similar:

Now you can copy the Native NDIS Drivers to ..\PXETemplates\000e7f.

• Locate the drivers in OSDepot\Support\FpyMaker\Connect\Microsoft IP and NETBEUI\Broadcom 10-100 NetXtreme and
• copy the "Connect" folder with all subfolders and the driver.txt file as shown to ..\PXETemplates\000e7f.

The next time your client will use the Native NDIS Drivers to connect to the OSDepot server.

Important

• Solution valid beginning with Columbus 6.4 with Hotfix 1