My name is Dan and I work for a large community college with multiple sites. We were preparing for the start of the semester, applying Windows 10 OS images and software to machines at all locations using SCCM.
Episode IV: Mitigating Mission-Critical Issues
I got an alert that the Distribution Point at our Westminster site was not responding. This was a mission-critical and time-sensitive issue and needed to be addressed immediately in order to be ready for classes the following week.
With reports that machines were not responding to PXE, I looked in the PXE log to discover a machine was trying to PXE boot repeatedly. The only information I had to go on was the MAC address of the machine. I was not able to find a machine associated with the mac address. I looked it up online and found that the mac address belonged to an IBM device. However, with a multitude of switch stacks, the task of finding the MAC address would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
That is when I realized Lansweeper could come to my rescue. Lansweeper scans the switch stacks on a regular schedule. I ran the built-in report “Computer: MAC Address List” to query the stacks at our Westminster site and found the MAC address in question by typing in the MAC address in the report filter. I then clicked through on the windows machine and saw that it was in the bookstore. I dispatched someone on site to the bookstore. They found a register in the bookstore that was continually rebooting and trying to PXE.
With the register disconnected from the network, the SCCM Distribution Point became responsive again and we were able to complete imaging and software deployment. We were able to complete all deployments and were ready for classes! With Lansweeper, it was easy to look like an IT hero.
Do you want to be the IT Hero in your company? Start your free trial of Lansweeper and use Lansweeper’s superpowers to your advantage. Make sure to check out Dan’s full video testimonial about Lansweeper below.
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