How to do a clean reinstall of PXE 6.5

Question


How do I reinstall my PXE Manager and PXE server cleanly so that nothing is carried over from the previous installation?



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Answer


Sometimes, due to certain environment issues, a PXE server can install incorrectly and become corrupted because of some other environment change. This can create the need to do a clean reinstall of PXE. The following steps explain a detailed process of uninstalling and reinstalling PXE without keeping anything from the previous installation.

If you reinstall PXE using this method you will lose all PXE boot menu configurations and options. These will need to be recreated after installing PXE in this way. All jobs created in the Deployment Server console and images captured from client machines will be unaffected.

If you want to keep your PXE menu options from your previous installation you will need to back up your PXE boot menu. The following linked article explains how to migrate a PXE boot menu from one server to another. These steps can also be used to backup and restore the PXE boot menu after reinstallation.

Browse to the following path on your Deployment Server:
C:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\PXE\MMAccessKey.ini
Copy this file into another directory outside of the PXE folder and keep it as a backup. This exact file will be needed after the uninstall of PXE. If this file is lost you will need to reinstall the entire Deployment Server to recreate the file.
Go to Add or Remove Programs in the Windows console panel and uninstall the following two components:
Altiris PXE Manager
Altiris PXE Server
Delete the following folder and all files in that folder:
C:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\PXE
Do a search on your Deployment Server (search the entire computer, all drives) for "PXE*.*". Delete any files and folders that appear to contain an installation of a PXE Server. Be carefull not to delete any of the PXE installation files normally contained in the DSSetup directory. Mainly you want to make sure that no previous PXE installations from a different version exist, or are installed to a different drive or another folder on your system. Also do a search on your entire computer for "CDSA*" and delete any occurrences of that term.
Recreate the PXE folder under the Deployment Server folder (the same folder that was deleted in step 3). This folder should not contain any files at this point.
Copy the MMAccessKey.ini file back into the PXE folder created in step 5.
Reinstall the PXE Manager by running PXEMgr.exe from the DSSetup folder. Go through the wizard entering all of the information that it requests. When the wizard asks for a username, make sure if you are using a local machine account that you put the machine name in the username (that is, if the DS computer name was "AltirisDS" and the username was "Administrator" you would enter "AltirisDS\Administrator"). If you do not have the DSSetup folder (because it was deleted after installing Deployment Server), you will need to recreate that folder by running the Deployment Server installer file and selecting "Extract Only".
Reinstall the PXE Server by running PXE.exe from the DSSetup folder. Go through the installation wizard of that component entering in all requested information.
Verify that all PXE services are running. If they are not running, try to start them and note any error message that it gives, or the event log entries that show the error. If all services are running correctly open the PXE Configuration Utility to verify that PXE is working correctly.