If you have a routed, high latency or just a slow network, OSD (WinPE) might timeout when initializing the network… This is a workaround for the issue…
Background info
In the OSD FP Update Microsoft increased the number of network retries from five to seven in every component but the one actually needing it (osdshell.exe) 🙂
Workaround, configure WinPE to start the network before launching osdshell…
1. Remove winpeshl.ini
2. Edit Startnet.cmd with the following info…
factory -winpe
osdshell
exit
Note: in really rare routed scenarios you might even need to add a timeout between “factory -winpe” and osdshell… I use the timeout.exe from Windows Server 2003 for this…
factory -winpe
timeout /t 5
osdshell
exit