SCCM Windows deployment troubleshooting – Part 2: Disk related issues

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Part 2 of my four-part article in SCCM troubleshooting discusses the many disk related issues possible during an OS deployment.

By Mike Taylor - Thu, December 6, 2012 - 0 comments

Mike Taylor has been working in IT for 12 years. He is a Windows administrator, scripter and OS deployment engineer based in London.

In the next three posts I will write about errors I have experienced whilst working with SCCM Windows deployment. I have re-written the “cause” from the original smsts.log and added my own brief explanation and what to do to fix it. My intention is to help you avoid even looking at the log files. You just look at the error popup instead! I have categorized the errors into: Disk issues, network, XML, and media. In this post I will cover disk issues

Error: Failed to run task-sequence 0×80070032

Error: Failed to stage WinPE. Code(0x80070032)

CAUSE: There is no valid file system either because the target is corrupt, encrypted or unformatted. The task requires SCCM to COPY the WinPE files to C: i.e. you must have an NTFS partition as a pre-requisite.

FIX: Quick format the disk with echo y|format c: /q or recreate the disk partitions using diskpart.exe

One other possibility I have seen for this error is that the disk you are targetting has gone “offline” (as seen by diskpart). Just make it online

sel dis 0

online dis

The parameter is incorrect. Error 0×80070057

CAUSE: no C: volume exists

FIX: Open a shell and use diskpart to create a C drive

The task-sequence has failed with Error: 0x80070070

CAUSE: The partition is too small for the build. On a new OEM machine the Task Sequence will default to install to the machine’s super secret OEM partition, which is 1GB at best, so your big 4GB “fat image” won’t fit. You may have the 100MB BitLocker partition present instead.

FIX: Check the partition sizes with diskpart and edit the disk as appropriate.

The directory is not empty. Error: 0×80070091

CAUSE: Once I somehow managed to allow the Task Sequence to write a logfile to C: whilst trying to wipe it at the same time.

FIX: My fix was simply to reboot, but as a general issue if SCCM cannot wipe the target disk because of corrupt files or illegal filenames, use “diskpart clean” and then re-run the deployment.

Element not found. Error 0×80070490

Symptom 1: if you open shell and try changing drive to C: you get: “The volume does not contain a recognised file system..”

Symptom 2: Unable to find a volume that is suitable for staging the boot image. Element not found.

CAUSE: The C drive is not formatted (or is encrypted) so SCCM cannot create logs, the task sequence or stage WinPE.

FIX:

1) Open a shell (F8)

2) format c: /q

That’s ALL. Don’t wipe the drive with “clean”! Format C will leave the other partitions (e.g. D: or whatever you have) intact.

Alternate CAUSE: The BIOS has set the HDD in RAID mode and the WinPE boot image has no suitable driver to even wipe the disk.

FIX: Set BIOS to use AHCI (or IDE if the machine is too old) or load RAID drivers into WinPE

Image has failed with the Error: 0x800700A1

CAUSE: No C partition exists OR the disk is RAW.

Fix: Create a C partition and format it with echo y|format c: /q. Then run tsbootshell.exe again to run the wizard.

Error: 0x80042413; source: unknown

CAUSE: Trying to format disk 0, partition 0, whilst using it at same time is generally not a good idea! Diskpart quits with error 2147755027

FIX: The disk will be corrupt now, so use diskpart clean. Format c: is not enough this time.

In Part 3 I will discuss SCCM errors related to networking , XML and media.