WDS Windows Cannot install required Files

Well here was a interesting one today, we use WDS in the datacentres to assist with the provisioning of servers. So today I had to build 2 new servers ready for tomorrow. I booted up the servers after configuring the network switches and pressed F12 at the appropriate time to get into the WDS system. I selected the OS I wanted and the system went ahead and started to install the server, however during the expansion part of the process I was presented with the error “Windows cannot install all files required for installation are available…….. Error code 0x80070570”

 

After a little digging around it seems that the Res.RWM may have become corrupt, the easiest solution was so remove the Image Group and recreate it. For me this was ok as I had the original wim files safely backed up.

 

Deleting and recreating the Image Group fixed the issue.

Windows 2008 R2 SP1 WDS Server will not start in a timely fashion

So today was interesting and it is true you learn something every day… I deployed a domain controller yesterday with DNS and WDS (Windows Deployment Service) to support my Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager 2012 deployment in the lab. However I hot an issue where the WDS server would not start, it popped up an error saying “The service did not respond to the start request in a timely fashion.” NICE!!

 

The event log was not much help, just giving me a Event ID 257 containing Error Information:0xFFFFFBB3

After a little head scratching, I ran the below command to disable the WDS server from listening on port 67 which is the port DHCP would use and as it is on the same computer it would cause some conflict.

wdsutil /set-server /UseDHCPPorts:No /DHCPOption60:yes

Still not luck and finally I found this blog that shows someone else hitting the same issue.

The server this is installed on is also fitting with two six core processors with hyper threading, providing 24 cores to the host OS. There appears to be a bug where the maximum number of processors is 20 before the service will not start.

To resolve:

Change the number of used processors used :

From a command prompt run the below command and reboot

bcdedit /set {current} numproc 2

Just like magic it is all up and running

 

To revert the changes back:

bcdedit /deletevalue {current} numproc

 

Now I can continue……….