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PXE-E32: TFTP Open Timeout - Only On Certian Clients?


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Hi,

I've had RIS running successfully for the past couple of years, and rarely have any problems. But today I've received a new laptop, an Acer Aspire 3020. I'm trying to boot off the LAN so I can install XP Pro (rather than Home edition, cringe!). However when I try and boot, I press F12, the PXE environment loads, DHCP info is received, then TFTP tries to communicate with the server, after about a minute, it fails with "PXE-E32: TFTP Open Timeout".

I have my old Dell Inspiron laptop, so tried booting with that, press F12, the PXE environment loads, DHCP info is received, then TFTP communicates almost instantly, it says press F12 to boot from network, if I do I can install from RIS successfully.

The RIS server is a member server of our domain. RIS has been authorised in DHCP. THe RIS server, Domain Controller, and all Clients are on the same subnet, NO routers or firewalls are between the clients & server (although there are 2 switches). So I can't under stand why one client works, but another doesn't!

What could be wrong with the new laptop? It's got an onboard Realtek 8110/8169 LAN card, which according to their website is PXE compliant.

Any help/suggestions greatly received

Kind regards

Ben

Edited by bjblackmore
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Hi,

A bit of googling gave me:

PXE-E32: TFTP open timeout.

TFTP open request was not acknowledged. Verify that the TFTP service is running.

This would suggest a problem with TFTP - though as you've noted, other machines are fine.

Realtek are known for producing less than A1 hardware, so it may be that the on-board LAN is simply of a low quality.

I have not seen this error myself, and by all accounts it is a hardware problem. As such, other than a BIOS flash to update the boot ROM - I can't think what else to do.

Good luck,

Andy

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Hi Andy,

Yeah I found that on Google as well, and although I knew RIS had to be running fine due to the other clients working, I checked out TFTP just to be sure. I checked the services and ran "risetup -check", everything reported back A-OK.

I guess my next step is to email Realtek and ask them for a BIOS update, as there is nothing on their site except drivers!

Cheers

Ben

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Hi Ben,

If it's a PCI card - and not an on-board NIC, then you might be out of luck asking for a new LAN boot ROM firmware update. If it is on-board then the update is usaully packaged with the system BIOS - so look for the latest motherboard BIOS in this case.

Do you have many of these Realtek devices?

If not, you might just want to bite the bullet and buy a different NIC.

Andy

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You may want to try integrating the latest RealTek driver for RIS only. In other words, just the .inf and .sys files in the i386 directory and restart the BINL service. My advice would be to NOT use the latest drivers for the PnP enumeration part of setup. Let it grab the default drivers that Microsoft supplies with XP. They seem to be the only drivers where the RealTek NIC will initialize and become active in time for the Machine half of Group Policy to apply.

It took me months to figure this one out. And like a numbskull, I always try the new drivers from RealTek whenever they update them just to see if they've fixed the problem. But sadly and predictably, they never work right. Even sadder still is that RealTek seems to have infected the laptops and motherboards of nearly every vendor out there. Must be that nobody can resist saving a nickle when they design their products.

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I second RogueSpear's comments - I've found the same to be true on almost all RealTek NICs I've come across. Use the RealTek drivers for RIS, but the Windows driver everywhere else :no:. Apparently, RealTek hasn't figured out how to write a decent driver. Perhaps they should consider using the Windows Driver DDK (in which even a trained seal could likely write a driver that works, but I digress)...

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  • 2 years later...

ok i know this is an ooold post, but i found it when googling the same TFTP boot error.

Ive been experiencing the exact same problem, and restarting TFTP on the RIS server did the trick.

So figured id tack that on there incase anyone else is having the same issue and found this thread via google :)

It could however be caused by the NIC as pointed out above.

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