The Realm of the Verbal Processor

SAS Window error during OSD Task Sequence

Last week I was building out an OSD Task Sequence for deploying XP w/ SP3 to hardware. The Build and Capture for creating the image worked fine, but during the deployment to hardware I kept getting an obscure message as it was running the step “Setup windows and ConfigMgr”:

SAS Window: winlogon.exe

The instruction at 0x12345abc referenced memory at 0x98765zyx. The memory could not be “read”.

When I looked at the smsts.log, I saw the infamous 80004005 message during the ConfigMgr client installation.

Executing command line: “C:\_SMSTaskSequence\OSD\ABC00099\ccmsetup.exe” /useronly /config:MobileClient.TCF /status:1604

FALSE, HRESULT=80004005 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\client\osdeployment\osdgina\installclient.cpp,1078)

Client installation failed, code 1

In doing some more digging through the smsts.log file I found log entries showing what appeared to be a previous attempt at installing the ConfigMgr client…one that was successful…14 minutes earlier than the 80004005 error above. The key line that struck me was:

Delete source directory C:\_SMSTaskSequence\Packages\ABC00099

Well…that would explain the 80004005. If the source directory had been deleted 14 minutes earlier…it didn’t have a prayer of executing the file that doesn’t exist any more. Now…what is causing the client installation 14 minutes earlier? To make a long story short…an automated process that I had put in place was interfering with the Task Sequence.

A while back I put a GPO startup script in place on all of the OUs where my workstation computer objects exist in AD. The script I am using is the Client Health script from DudeWorks. The script checks a few common issues that could occur on a client, and if any of those are messed up, it fixes the issue. It’s about a 1300 line VBS…Rob Olsen did an awesome job with it! One of the things it checks is whether the ConfigMgr client service is running and set to AUTO.

During the execution of the Task Sequence, that service is installed, but disabled. The Client Health script was kicking in during the Task Sequence…and reinstalling the client…which caused the source files to get deleted too early…and eventually caused the failure.

The fix was quite simple…don’t point that startup script at the OU where the Task Sequence is set to put the new computer account.

[A big thanks to my co-worker Jeff for realizing that it was the startup script causing the problem…we had both been beating on the problem for entirely too long.]

August 4, 2008 - Posted by Jarvis | ConfigMgr