Just finished another SCCM 2012 R2 SP1 upgrade, this time with a very “interesting” outcome. The site was a single primary site with close to 100 distribution points. The upgrade process went somehow smooth, primary site server was upgraded without any issues, except the management points had to restart before the SMS bootstrap service would successfully configure the components.

For a while everything seemed like a normal upgrade, the site component manager was running and initiating the installation of the remote site systems. But after a little while, we discovered that the content distribution didn’t distribute new content. A look in the distmgr.log revealed that the component was stuck in ConfigurePXE. That I have seen before and often fixed by restarting the remote PXE enabled distribution point (and wait for the distribution manager to continue the WDS configuration on the remote server). This time the restart fix the WDS issue ontwo of the distribution points. Instead the error blocked all other distributions – a scenario that is not super great when you have a business to run.

Error in the distribution manager log file on the site server

ConfigureDP    SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER    09-07-2015 16:08:47    8076 (0x1F8C)
IISPortsList in the SCF is "80".    SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER    09-07-2015 16:08:47    8076 (0x1F8C)
IISSSLPortsList in the SCF is "443".    SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER    09-07-2015 16:08:47    8076 (0x1F8C)
IISWebSiteName in the SCF is "".    SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER    09-07-2015 16:08:47    8076 (0x1F8C)
IISSSLState in the SCF is 480.    SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER    09-07-2015 16:08:47    8076 (0x1F8C)
DP registry settings have been successfully updated on dpserver.domain.com    SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER    09-07-2015 16:09:24    8076 (0x1F8C)
STATMSG: ID=9501 SEV=I LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Server" COMP="SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER" SYS=dpserver.domain.comSITE=PS1 PID=4424 TID=8076 GMTDATE=Thu Jul 09 14:09:25.111 2015 ISTR0="["Display=\\dpserver.domain.com\"]MSWNET:["SMS_SITE=PS1"]\\dpserver.domain.com\" ISTR1="" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=1 AID0=404 AVAL0="["Display=\\dpserver.domain.com\"]MSWNET:["SMS_SITE=PS1"]\\dpserver.domain.com\"    SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER    09-07-2015 16:09:25    8076 (0x1F8C)
STATMSG: ID=9503 SEV=I LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Server" COMP="SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER" SYS=dpserver.domain.com SITE=PS1 PID=4424 TID=8076 GMTDATE=Thu Jul 09 14:09:25.114 2015 ISTR0="["Display=\\dpserver.domain.com\"]MSWNET:["SMS_SITE=PS1"]\\dpserver.domain.com\" ISTR1="" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=1 AID0=404 AVAL0="["Display=\\dpserver.domain.com\"]MSWNET:["SMS_SITE=PS1"]\\dpserver.domain.com\"    SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER    09-07-2015 16:09:25    8076 (0x1F8C)
ConfigurePXE    SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER    09-07-2015 16:09:25    8076 (0x1F8C)

 

Looking at the distmgr.log file it’s easy to see the component just waits while the ConfigurePXE process is running on the rmeote distribution point. What the distrmgr.log file is not telling you, is why it’s not able to finish the process. In order to answer that question you have to look at the smsdpprov.log file on the remote distribution point. looking in this log file clearly states that the problem is related to installing and configuring the WDS component. This is the phase where a restart of the distribution point normally helps – but not in this case.

Errors on the faulty distribution points in the smsdpprov.log file

[F40][Wed 07/08/2015 23:37:32]:RegReadString failed; 0x80070002
[F40][Wed 07/08/2015 23:37:32]:SMS multicast provider is not installed.
[F40][Wed 07/08/2015 23:37:32]:Running: ServerManagerCmd.exe -r WDS
[F40][Wed 07/08/2015 23:37:32]:Waiting for the completion of: ServerManagerCmd.exe -r WDS
[F40][Wed 07/08/2015 23:38:59]:Failed to run: ServerManagerCmd.exe -r WDS. Program returned 000003e9
[F40][Wed 07/08/2015 23:38:59]:Running: PowerShell.exe -Command Import-Module ServerManager; Get-WindowsFeature WDS; Remove-WindowsFeature WDS
[F40][Wed 07/08/2015 23:38:59]:Waiting for the completion of: PowerShell.exe -Command Import-Module ServerManager; Get-WindowsFeature WDS; Remove-WindowsFeature WDS
[F40][Wed 07/08/2015 23:39:05]:Failed to run: PowerShell.exe -Command Import-Module ServerManager; Get-WindowsFeature WDS; Remove-WindowsFeature WDS. Program returned 00000001
[F40][Wed 07/08/2015 23:39:05]:Failed to remove WDS.

The solution

The solution to the problem was to assist the remote WDS server and make sure the component worked before letting SCCM configure it using the steps below:

  1. Uninstall WDS
  2. Delete these WDS registry  keys – these registry keys normally have the wrong values and causing WDS to not start correctly.
    HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WDSMC
    HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WDSServer
    HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WDSTFTP
  3. Delete the remote install folder.
  4. Reboot the machine.
  5. Restart the distribution manager component on the site server (or wait until the retry happens automatically) and you will start seeing the component being configured correctly. Shortly after that all other content distribution will start being distributed to all distribution points in the site.