Windows Deployment Services Doesn't Survive Reboot

Question

I have a Windows 2008 R2 server with all the latest updates that acts as a Domain Controller, and it also has the Windows Deployment Services service on it. DHCP is handled by a separate router.

Whenever this server is rebooted, say after security patches, WDS does not come back up. The service is currently set to Automatic - Delayed Start, because at first I was hoping that maybe it was just trying to start up too soon. But that has not helped.

When I RDP to the server or connect to it via RSAT, I am able to start the WDS service by hand just fine. But I don't want to have to restart it manually every time the machine reboots.

Here are some of the related error messages I see from WDS when the machine reboots and WDS fails to come back up:

Machine reboots at 3AM after installing updates.

• Information 3/14/2012 3:09:30 AM WDSServer 1025 WDSServer The RPC server started on TCP port 5040.
• Information 3/14/2012 3:09:30 AM WDSServer 517 WDSServer Provider BINLSVC loaded from C:\Windows\system32\binlsvc.dll and initialized successfully.
• Information 3/14/2012 3:09:32 AM ESENT 301 Logging/Recovery svchost (2652) DDP: The database engine has begun replaying logfile D:\RemoteInstall\Stores\Drivers\Metadata\DDP.log.
• Error 3/14/2012 3:11:35 AM WDSServer 513 WDSServer An error occurred while trying to initialize provider WdsImgSrv from C:\Windows\system32\WdsImgSrv.dll. Windows Deployment Services server will be shutdown. Error Information: 0x54B
• Error 3/14/2012 3:11:36 AM WDSServer 257 WDSServer An error occurred while trying to start the Windows Deployment Services server.
  Error Information: 0x54B

Those are pretty much the most relevant event log entries as far as I can tell.

edit: .... And I think I just answered my own question. I know that WDS depends on being able to contact Active Directory... and like an idiot, I had my two DCs for this domain configured to reboot for updates at the same time. I have corrected that so that the other DC will be up while the first is trying to reboot. Hopefully that fixes it.

Answer 1

Answered my own question, the problem was both DCs restarting at the same time.

Answer 2

Based on what I have seen Your comment about active directory accessibility is right on the mark. I ran into a similar problem in a test lab with WDS and MDT running on the only DC. I worked around it by setting the service to restart on failure. I also did some reading on defining service dependencies but nothing really came of it.