The Windows Deployment Services (WDS) server in Windows Server 2008 stops working after the authenticating domain controller becomes unavailable if it cannot locate another available domain controller

Consider the following scenario:

• The Windows Deployment Services (WDS) role is enabled on a Windows Server 2008-based computer.
• This WDS server is part of a domain, and there are multiple domain controllers.
• A domain controller becomes unavailable.

In this scenario, one or more of the WDS services cannot start. When this problem occurs, the WDS clients receive the following error message: Additionally, the following events may be logged in the Application logs on the WDS server:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: BINLSVC
Event Category: BINLSVC
Event ID: 1803
Description: An error occurred while attempting to locate the Service Control Point object for this Windows Deployment Services server in Active Directory Domain Services. There was an error reading the 'netbootSCPBL' attribute from the Computer object.
Error Information: 0x51

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: BINLSVC
Event Category: BINLSVC
Event ID: 1050
Description: Windows Deployment Services encountered an error while attempting to connect to the directory service via the domain controller. The error code is in the record data.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: BINLSVC
Event Category: BINLSVC
Event ID: 770
Description: An error occurred while updating the Auto Add Policy settings. The Windows Deployment Services server will not process incoming client requests.
Error Information: 0x2

Event Type: Error
Event Source: BINLSVC
Event Category: BINLSVC
Event ID: 513
Description: An error occurred while trying to read the configuration information for the Active Directory Connection Manager. The most common causes for this are a failure reading registry settings or a failure contacting a Domain Controller. The Windows Deployment Services server will not process incoming client requests.
Error Information: 0x2

Event Type: Error
Event Source: WDSIMGSRV
Event Category: WdsImgSrv
Event ID: 266
Description: An error occurred while refreshing settings.
Error Information: 0x6BE

Event Type: Error
Event Source: WDSIMGSRV
Event Category: WdsImgSrv
Event ID: 266
Description: An error occurred while refreshing settings.
Error Information: 0x3A

When the WDS Server starts, it discovers a domain controller and a global catalog server pair to read the server settings. Then, the WDS server updates the server settings from this pair every 15 minutes. However, if the pair crashes, the server does not switch to an available pair as expected. Therefore, the server enters an error state.

The hotfix that was described in this article has been replaced by the hotfix in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article, 971372. For more information, refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article, and then install the hotfix that is mentioned in that article:

To work around the issue, restart the Windows Deployment Services Server service.

Note You cannot determine which domain controller is the connected domain controller for a WDS server. Therefore, you must restart the WDS service after any domain controller goes down. If multiple WDS servers exists, you have to restart the Windows Deployment Services Server service on every WDS servers if any domain controller is down.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

For more information about the Windows Deployment Services role, visit the following Microsoft Web site: