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Troubleshooting Task Sequences in System Center Configuration Manager

This article will give some guidance on how to start troubleshooting Task Sequences in System Center Configuration Manager 2007.

Task sequences provide the mechanism for performing multiple steps or tasks on a client computer at the command-line level without requiring user intervention.

When you install an operating system using SCCM-OSD Task Sequences you don't see any output of the tasks which are running, so if an installation fails you have to start digging into what went wrong.
Fortunately SCCM 2007 uses a lot of log files, and when troubleshooting Task Sequences you will have to start looking for the smsts.log file.

In order to start troubleshooting you have to do a couple of things:

Step 1: Enable command prompt support on boot image

Right Click Boot Image and select Properties. In Windows PE Tab select "Enable command support (testing only)"

Step 2: Install trace32.exe on your working machine.

Trace32.exe is part of the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Toolkit. And can be used to:

- To view the logfiles
Marks errors as yellow and critical errors as red

- To look up error codes

Note: doesn't work on 64-bit WindowsPE because of the fact that Windows PE 64-bit doesn't have Windows on Windows, and since trace32.exe is 32-bit only it won't work. Therefore if you want to troubleshoot 64-bit and 32-bit installations you will have to use trace32.exe on a remote machine.
If you only use 32-bit boot images and install 32-bit Operating Systems, you can integrate trace32.exe in your boot image en copy it to your OS while installing.

Step 3: Locate the smsts.log file

During installation the smsts.log file is located at different places:

a. System booted in Windows PE and the local harddisk not modified

You can find the smsts.log file in the x:\windows\temp\smstslog folder

b. System booted in Windows PE and the local harddisk partitioned and formatted

You can find the smsts.log file in the x:\smstslog folder and it will be copied to the c:\_SMSTaskSequence\Logs\Smstslog folder

c. System booted in Windows before the Configuration Manager is installed

You can find the smsts.log file in the c:\_SMSTaskSequence\Logs\Smstslog

d. System booted in Windows after Configuration Manager is installed

You can find the smsts.log file in the c:\windows\system32\ccm\logs\Smstslog folder (or in the c:\windows\SysWOW64\ccm\logs\Smstslog folder on x64 machines)

Everytime the machine is booted while under control of the Task Sequence the smsts.log file will be copied to a smsts--.log file, and a new smsts.log file will be created at boot time containing the actions performed at that time.

If you notice that your smsts.log file doesn't contain all the information you need, you should modify the default size of the smsts.log file. (for more details see: How can i increase the size of the smsts.log file)

Step 4: Copy the smsts.log file to a file share which you can access from your workstation on which you have trace32.exe available.

From this point you can examine the smsts.log file in order to find out what went wrong. The messages displayed can sometimes be very confusing, but i will give you a good idea on where to start looking.

Further: Also make sure that all the packages you install have logging enabled, i prefer to install every package using an CMD and log it's output to a log file (installation.cmd 1>>%LogFilesFolder%\installation.log 2>&1) and also enable logging while installing .msi files (using the /l*v "%LogFilesFolder%\installation.log" switch when you call msiexec.exe)

Keep in mind though that the smsts.log file only logs Task Sequence related issues, therefore you should enable logging where possible. Logging of the Windows OS installation can be found in the windows\debug folder.

References:

List of Log Files in Configuration Manager 2007
Troubleshooting Operating System Deployment
Log Files for Operating System Deployment
Monitoring Operating System Deployments
Operating System Deployment Issues
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Toolkit
How Can I Increase The Size Of The Smsts.log File?
Windows Vista setup log file locations
Windows systems log files overview
What log files does Windows XP create during installation?

Further: Also make sure that all the packages you install have logging enabled, i prefer to install every package using an CMD and log it’s output to a log file (installation.cmd 1>>LogFilesFolder\installation.log 2>&1) and also enable logging while installing .msi files (using the /l*v “LogFilesFolder\installation.log” switch when you call msiexec.exe)\n
This is really interesting topic, I’ll write a paper on it or probably use the essay writing service.

Matthew (URL) - 27 May '10 - 15:40

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