@dylan123 Brilliant suggestion, I didn’t think of that. Unfortunately, with the dock disconnected, we have the same result. I have also tried using the nic on the dock. I have tried a powered usb hub as well. I get the “Failed to get an IP via DHCP” message immediately if I have the usb nic directly connected. In the hub, it waits 35 seconds before the message pops up.
EDIT: I think I figured it out. I failed to realize that my powered USB hub has its own nic. I gather that it is switching the interface to that once it gets to the screen I am having trouble with. My first test, I let it pxe boot and when it got to the “Sleeping for 5 seconds” part, I quickly swapped the ethernet from the microsoft dongle to the USB hub port. It imaged perfectly. My second test is to hook up network to both the USB hub and the dongle going into the USB hub, and I had no trouble. I guess it is “switching” from the microsoft dongle MAC to the USB hub MAC when it hits this stage. I will try to get a powered usb hub (tried non powered to no avail) sans the nic. I am just curious why the stupid dongle by itself can’t pull an ip at that stage.