The Raven Report

Problem: 

PXE boot option will not map a drive (default F:) to the DS. All the configuration seems correct and the password has been verified.

Cause:

Altiris uses a LAN Manager Hash file to store  and user the password. Most security polices require the hashing of passwords to be disabled for the domain /server.  This is normally disabled via group policy in the Network security: Do not store LAN Manager hash value on next password change setting being enabled.

Solution:

In most environments it will not be possible to enable this setting across the domain due to security policies, but you can do it for local accounts if you move the server in question to an OU where a policy  over the Network security: Do not store LAN Manager hash value on next password change  to disabled. After the policy propagates reboot the server and create a new local account for PXE booting. You will now be able to use this account in your PXE Boot options just use workgroup as the domain.  Once the password is set you could re-enable the Network security: Do not store LAN Manager hash value on next password change   as this setting only applies during password changes.

If you ever wanted to remove a boot option from the PXE configuration utility that was flagged in use then you know it can be quite a pain figuring out what jobs are referencing the boot option and changing them. I have even had a couple occasions where the boot options were changed but I still couldn’t remove the old PXE option.

So do you just leave it and act like it doesn’t exist? No I say, to the database we must go.

First open the PXE Config utility select and choose edit on the Boot option in question.

Once the Edit Shared menu Option is open look at the File location and get the  number from the end of the path. 161 in our case

Now open SQL Query editor and point it to the Express DB

Run the following Query

select * from dbo.task
where bootoption_id = 161

This will return any jobs that reference the boot option. In this case Event_id 200735 references this boot option.  There is also a task_seq which is used if there are additional steps in a job that reference the boot option.

Now we need to run another query get  the Job info this si stored in the events table

where event_id = 2000735

From this query we can get the name of the job. Once we have the name we can go into the DS console and easily find the job and change the boot option. Once these are updated we can once again go into the PXE Config Utility and delete the offending Boot option.