Microsoft Deployment Toolkit | Cannot Connect to Deployment Share

Question

When I do a PXE boot and choose the Lite Touch Windows PE (x64) boot image option I receive the following wizard error. 'A connection to the deployment share (\servername\deploymentshare$) could not be made. Connection OK. Possible cause: Invalid Credentials.

I did have MDT working successfully at one time. I assume the issue is due to a password change we made on a local account. I am trying to figure out where to update the credentials.

I updated the username and password in the Rules section of the Deployment Workbench > Task Sequences. That did not help. I updated the credentials under the BootStrap.ini file at the same location without any luck.

Where can I update the credentials?

Answer 1

I encountered the same error even though nothing changed in our environment.

Using F8 during the MDT wizard and manually trying to map the MDT network drive using "net use" got me a more precise error pointing me in the right direction.

In my case it was the bios clock which was wrong, causing the authentication to fail.

Answer 2

Hi, @Paul Bailey
Thank you for posting in Microsoft Q&A forum.
The credentials under the BootStrap.ini file is is written to the Lite Touch Windows PE boot image when we update deployment share. So after you update the credentials under the BootStrap.ini file, did you update deployment share again to generate the new boot image? And update the new boot image in WDS before you do a PXE boot.

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Answer 3

I did try that with a domain user and still receive the Invalid credentials message. This is what I have in the bootstrap.ini file:

[Settings]
Priority=Default

[Default]
UserDomain=mydomain.org
UserID=DomainUser
UserPassword=P@ssw0rd
DeployRoot=\SERVER\DeploymentShare$

This user does have permissions to the deployment share. Do I need to copy the Lite Touch Windows PE boot image to a particular location? I see that the wizard is supposed to copy the file to the deployment share..

Answer 4

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

Have you updated deployment share after you changed bootstrap.ini file as AllenLiu suggest? Please click deployment_share, and then in the Actions pane, click Update Deployment Share (where deployment_share is the name of the deployment share you want to update).

Generally, we need to update the deployment share any time we make changes that affect the boot image. That would include:

• New or modified mass storage and network drivers that need to be injected into the boot image.
• Changes to the boot image settings (e.g. adding fonts, changing the RAMdisk size)
• Changes to the bootstrap.ini file
• Changes to any of the files in an "extra" folder

The update process has been optimized to do as little as possible, so it knows what changes need to be made. If there were no changes, it should finish very quickly.

Best regards,
Simon

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