@george1421 Yeah, I didn’t think it would make a difference at all. I just figured it might be worth noting. I’ve managed to get the ipxe.efi file transferred to the secondary location without leaving the primary. I’m about to reboot one of the problematic rigs now to see if it will boot properly. Cross your fingers.

EDIT: Well, upon a simple reboot it managed to make it into Windows. However, it was one that I had not previously imaged with FOG. Once I had deployed the image to the rig, it will no longer boot into Windows. This is bizarre.

@JJ-Fullmer Creating a bootable USB with rEFInd 0.12.0 (the latest listed here) and trying to boot from that resulted in immediate rejection and attempting to load Windows and another black screen.

Creating a bootable USB with rEFInd 0.11.0 and booting from that immediately brought up the rEFInd menu without any issues.

@george1421 Yes. I edited my previous post. I had posted that before you sent the rest of the chat messages. I had only seen the link.

Thanks again for the help, mate.

@sebastian-roth Again, I can’t check right now, but I’m pretty sure secure boot is disabled. I will look further into what you suggest when I get another chance to work on this project. Thank you.

I don’t think I did say yes to having my FOG server handle DHCP, but I don’t remember.

Can those iPXE binaries be changed in the webgui?

@george1421 Yes. I edited my previous post. I had posted that before you sent the rest of the chat messages. I had only seen the link.

Thanks again for the help, mate.

@george1421 Thanks. Would I still be able to deploy the image by creating a task in the FOG webgui?

EDIT: I see your second message. I can do everything by scheduling in the FOG webgui. That works. I will play around with this another day when I have time to do so again.

Thanks for the help.

@george1421 How do I boot USB? And what capabilities of FOG would I not have access to?

@george1421 I guess it hangs starting iPXE. It detects media, downloads the boot file and then begins to initialize devices before it freezes. It never makes it to any menus after I instruct it to boot via the IPv4 NIC.

As for whether the motherboard is in BIOS or UEFI mode, That’s a great question. I don’t quite remember and I can’t check right now but I’m pretty sure it’s in UEFI mode.

@george1421 If by “the latest firmware on the HTPC” you mean the newest available BIOS for my motherboard, it does indeed have the newest BIOS. It’s an MSI H61M-P21 with BIOS 19.2 which is the latest listed on their website.

Is it that simple? A BIOS incompatibility? I guess my newer rig works because the BIOS is not conflicting with iPXE. If that’s the case, it’s very disappointing.

EDIT: On closer examination, that link does indicate that I have a Realtek NIC. It’s weird that inxi in Mint reports a Qualcomm NIC. Maybe that’s why it’s having issues.

@bristow-0 I’m running FOG 1.5.9 in a Buster 10 VM on Proxmox 6.1-3 and it’s mostly working fine. I imagine a significantly newer version of Proxmox wouldn’t have any issues. I was able to register and capture an imagine from a Ryzen 7 3700X machine. I’m just having issues booting my HTPC from ipxe for some reason I can’t figure out.

Hi guys.

This seems to be a common enough problem, but all the threads I am able to find about it are either really old or not quite specific enough to my issue. I’m using FOG 1.5.9 on a headless Debian 10 Buster server which is running in a Proxmox VM. I have it all set up, I believe, correctly. I was able to properly register and capture an image from my much newer (Ryzen 7 3700X) gaming machine but when I try to boot my HTPC (i5 3470) it hangs on initializing devices. I’m not sure which machine would be at fault here. My server (LGA 771 era dual Xeon machine) but it works for the gaming machine so I’m at a loss. I think it has to be the fault of the HTPC but I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve read that realtek NICs can cause this problem, but the NIC in my HTPC is a Qualcomm and the VM is using a virtual intel NIC, probably passed through from the Supermicro motherboard.

Any constructive input appreciated. Thanks.

EDIT: After a little more research, I’ve been able to determine one possibility. Could it maybe be a host boot kernel issue? I’m apparently running kernel 4.19.0-11, but that kernel isn’t even listed when I go into Kernel Update in FOG. Would it be worth upgrading the kernel? I don’t want to make it stop booting my gaming rig.

EDIT AGAIN: Now that I think about it, the kernel that FOG is running doesn’t have to be the same one that it boots hosts on. Where do I find which kernel it is using to boot hosts? My other question still stands though, if I can upgrade the kernel, is that something worth trying?

EDIT #3: Corrections.

@Sebastian-Roth Here’s a strange new development that I happened upon today. I’m not 100% sure if this actually has anything to do with the issue, but at my primary location there is a particular rig with the troublesome MSI motherboard that was no having any issues booting past the iPXE menu…until I tried to update the nVidia graphics card driver. Once I updated the driver, then it started having the same boot-looping issue the rigs at the secondary location were having. The rigs at the secondary location all have newer drivers than some of the ones at the primary, since I made sure the image I took down there was up to date. I wouldn’t think the graphics card driver would have anything to do with it, but there it is. It’s really…weird.

EDIT: Confirmed. This particular rig, at least, will not boot past the iPXE menu when the newest driver I have downloaded (456.71) is installed. Despite a BSoD and hard crash during installation, the driver seemed to have installed correctly and the machine was mining and the manager was reporting the correct driver, it would not boot past the iPXE menu and into Windows. When I uninstalled that driver and reinstalled an older one (452.06) it has no problem booting past iPXE and into Windows. To confirm further, I reinstalled both drivers a couple of times just to make sure. The result was the same. I dunno.

@Sebastian-Roth Updating BIOS did not solve the problem. I don’t know what’s going on but I do know that I, personally, will never buy an MSI product for this and several other reasons.