WDS downloading wdsnbp.com even though architecture discovery is off

[jalexander319]

I use WDS regularly as a front end to deliver a customized winpe image to my clients. I don't use WDS to deliver any OS images. I am setting up a new 2008r2 server and either something has changed or I am having a complete brain fart. My understanding was that if you have the architecture discovery disabled then it would always use the x86 folder and would not download the wdsnbp file. This is how it has been working for several years now on our 2003 WDS setup. But with this new installation it doesn;t matter whether I have it disabled or enabled, the client always responds with "Downloaded WDSNBP... Architecture:x64 Contacting Server: <blah> TFTP Download: boot\x64\pxeboot.n12" which I don't want to happen. I want all clients to boot from the x86 folder. Mainly just so I don't have to maintain both folders when I make a change.

I have used WDSUTIL to enable it, disable it with all combinations of starting and stopping WDS and the entire server. I even checked the registry setting for the architecture discovery. What am I missing?

[Tripredacus]

Yes it will always download that in my experience. I never tried disabling the detection. Fortunately you can manually set the boot options for the server. In the Server properties, on the Boot tab, set your x86 and x64 boot image to be the same. I do not have a server anymore that has that option set... but here is that menu:

[cluberti]

I use WDS regularly as a front end to deliver a customized winpe image to my clients. I don't use WDS to deliver any OS images. I am setting up a new 2008r2 server and either something has changed or I am having a complete brain fart. My understanding was that if you have the architecture discovery disabled then it would always use the x86 folder and would not download the wdsnbp file. This is how it has been working for several years now on our 2003 WDS setup. But with this new installation it doesn;t matter whether I have it disabled or enabled, the client always responds with "Downloaded WDSNBP... Architecture:x64 Contacting Server: <blah> TFTP Download: boot\x64\pxeboot.n12" which I don't want to happen. I want all clients to boot from the x86 folder. Mainly just so I don't have to maintain both folders when I make a change.

I have used WDSUTIL to enable it, disable it with all combinations of starting and stopping WDS and the entire server. I even checked the registry setting for the architecture discovery. What am I missing?

It shouldn't matter what it detects - if you only have x86 images, it's only going to boot an x86 PE image. I'm not sure you need to go through all of the trouble to force x86 booting - an x64-detected machine will still boot and run an x86 image if that's the image (or those are the images) available from the boot images folder in WDS.