I'm not sure why this keeps on happening but my wdsnbp.com boot file keeps going MIA. The files located in the remote install\smsboot\x86\. I was able to fix it last week by doing the wdsutil /uninitialize and then wdsutil /initialize to replace the files. But now I am trying the same thing and it's not replacing the files. Any suggestions on what to do next?

check that your antivirus software isn't removing the files for some reason, you may have to completely reinstall WDS - here's a good troubleshooter My step by step SCCM Guides I'm on Twitter > ncbrady

I will have to start monitoring the antivirus. It is quite maddening knowing it was just there and it has gone missing - like misplacing your keys. You've confirmed what I originally thought, to reinstall the WDS. I was just hoping there would be an alternate solution.

well if you have more servers you could simply copy back the missing file(s) but as the problem has happened to you already i'd start trying to find out why they are being deleted, does event viewer logs reveal anything ? My step by step SCCM Guides I'm on Twitter > ncbrady

I've checked the event viewer pretty thouroughly. I don't see anything that stands out to as why it would delete whats in my smsboot\x86 folder. I was thinking the uninitialize/initialize process would repopulate my reminst folder but for some reason it will leave the smsboot\x86 folder empty. Quite frustration. Going to bury my head into the event viewer logs again to see if I missed anything.

So after reinstalling the WDS and PXE Service Point my remote install\smsboot\x86\ folder was not repopulated with files. Am I correct in thinking that reinstalling the WDS should add files back into that directory?

I just figured it out. The RemInst folder was located in c:\windows\system32\reminst. The folders were populated in there.

The solution was short-sighted. I pulled wdsnbp.com file from system32\reminst\x86 and this wdsnbp.com file is giving me the boot/bcd error. This leads me to believe it is not the correct wdsnbp.com file. Niall, how in the world do you repopulate the d:\remoteinstall\smsboot\x86 folders!

if you start the WDS mmc and right click on your wds server, choose Configure WDS server and go through the wizard, that should allow you to specify the RemoteInstall directory and the files should get populated. can you try this please My step by step SCCM Guides I'm on Twitter > ncbrady

When going to the WDS MMC, the server is already configured. With the directory for RemInst being d:\remoteinstall. This was configured with my previous WDS reinstallation. It did not populate my smsboot folders though.

To answer your question more thoroughly, I uninitialized the server and reconfigured the server - many times. Each time I've tried different RemInst directorys. It will populate the folder - all but whats in the SMSBoot sub-folders. I have been noticing this error on some installs - "The service did not respond ot the start or control request in a timely fashion."

what wserver os is it ? if ws2008 or later try setting the service startup to delayed start, can you manually start the service ? My step by step SCCM Guides I'm on Twitter > ncbrady

it is ws2008. It seems that error message about not starting in a timely fashion is not consistent. I'm able to configure WDS without getting that error message now. I can manually start/stop the service. Without the reconfigure repopulating my smsboot\x86 - x64 folders I've literally hit a brick wall. Do you think reinstalling the WAIK would help?

This happened to me as well today. After doing a complete uninstall/reinstall of the PXE Service Point and WDS, and getting the SMSBoot folders to populate, and finally getting PXE boot to work and image a Windows 7 and Vista machine (after about 2 weeks of trying to get it to work). I went to image another one today and after the PXE boot failed I checked the SMSBoot x86 and x64 folders and they were empty! Finding this post I copied the files from c:\windows\system32\reminst back into the SMSBoot folder and PXE boot worked on the machine, although then it said it got no response from the WDS server. Go figure. I restarted WDS and it booted again, but then aborted. Argh. Here we go again I suppose. This is the first time this has happened, but it's frustrating considering I finally got it working after two weeks of troubleshooting only to have the files disappear. There is no AV installed on this machine so I have no clue what deleted the files.