This problem will increase more and more as everyone starts to use wim's instead of the OS media in SCCM.

There are a few workarounds for this problem however the best method is to force the new OS the reevaluate Drive Letters with 3 easy steps after applying the OS

Create a Run Command Line step for each of the 3 commands

Reg.exe load HKLM\Temp %OSDTargetSystemDrive%\Windows\system32\config\system

Reg.exe delete HKLM\Temp\MountedDevices /va /f

Reg.exe unload HKLM\Temp

This forces the default behaviour of Windows to choose the drive letter.

For more information and other workarounds see http://blogs.technet.com/b/configurationmgr/archive/2014/04/28/how-to-ensure-that-windows-installs-on-c-during-a-system-center-2012-configuration-manager-osd-task-sequence.aspx

If you are getting alot of error 2719 under SMS_INVENTORY_DATA_LOADER in a multiple user enviroment such as a lab of computers consider tweaking the data you are collecting.

Inventory Data Loader failed to process the file G:Program FilesMicrosoft Configuration Managerinboxesauthdataldr.boxProcessH5CCBXME.MIF because it is larger than the defined maximum allowable size of 5000000.

Solution: Increase the maximum allowable size, which is defined in the registry key HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftSMSComponentsSMS_INVENTORY_DATA_LOADERMax MIF Size (the default is 5 MB), and wait for Inventory Data Loader to retry the operation.

Solution is not increasing the maximum allowable size and make your DB massive.

In a multiple user environment the class that will be expanding those mifs is the 'CCM_RecentlyUsedApps'.

To cut the fat go to the Administration pane in SCCM 2012, then Client Settings. Right click 'Default Client Settings' and choose properties.

In the new window click 'Hardware Inventory'

Click 'Set Classes'

Search for 'CCM_RecentlyUsedApps', expand it. Is up to decide what you really need but we have deseleted the following.

Get the Servicing Exstension from Microsoft NOW as it does all the work!!! http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2014/12/09/now-available-microsoft-system-center-2012-configuration-manager-servicing-extension.aspx

Once you have this, in the Admin node, there's a site servicing section -> client targeting. You click 'Create Query' and it makes a nice query for your collections.

Then you go about creating your collection.

click next. Select Add Rule -> Query Rule

Click Import Query Statement and choose the nice query microsoft made for you.

Deploy the cumulative update to the clients.

Update:

If this is happening to you I recommend importing the boot wim again creating a new one and only adding the network drivers (in the surface pro 3 case) and test using that boot wim with a copy of your task sequence. Then add existing sata/network drivers you need for other devices using latest versions.

I recieved an email from someone that has the same issue, he noticed that Microsoft ships with either a Hynix SSD or a Samsung SSD. The Samsung SSD has never had any issues. From my SCCM data we have 20% Hynix drives - possibly due to change of hard drive supply or shortage, I'm not sure. This will explain why you may be going crazy not understanding why encountering imaging issues after having success.

In this scenario the formatting of the disk fails and then the disk just dissapears even in diskpart until next reboot.

Solution is to get the correct SATA driver for the device. This happened on one of the Surface Pro 3's yet all the others imaged fine. Using the driver provided by the driver pack in the boot wim the task sequence was able to successfully format the disk.

Text from the smsts.log:

When not using the latest version of bootable media and the system is not partitioned SCCM is meant to create a temporary partition to stage the correct boot wim. What actually happens is it just creates 1 big NTFS partition.

What actually happens is it just creates 1 big NTFS partition.

Then it checks the for a system partition and bombs out.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/hh824839.aspx states that the System partition must be formatted FAT32, SCCM is formatting it NTFS so it never gets recognised as a system partition.

For UEFI the EFI & MSR volume should also be created to make system partition readable and bootable.

I created a hotfix request, will update this post if anything comes of it.

If you happen to change the source name of a boot wim the pxe point may boot using the old file. To fix rename

<Drive Letter>RemoteInstallSMSImages<WIMPkgID>oldbootname.wim to oldbootname.wim.old

Next PXE boot it will then use the new boot.wim file.

SCCM ConfigMgr doesn't like quotes around paths when adding packages or Wims, etc so the secret shh shift + right click copy as path isn't that handy.

Here's a reg file to add a special right click option for ConfigMgr

Download

After using a new captured image (Win 7 x64) certain machines were not completing OSD and ending up at a black screen with just a mouse cursor.
Dell T1700, E6440, E7240, M4800. This was after the May patching, the only update that has been reported to play up (well with flash?) was KB2926765. We removed this patch from the base and the problem no longer occured. It's possible that it affects machines with the nic I217-LM, but probably a revision as it did not happen on the 9020.

Update: I think it is to do with driver injection and i7 cpu's. We still had some issues after this with drivers not installing correctly on i7's. Using the x64 boot wim resolved this.

Would love to hear if anyone else encounters this.

Have you ever needed someone to collect logs off a machine and came to find that the vital log you wanted wasn't collected? Lost in the sea of logs?

Microsoft feels your pain!

Microsoft has released an excellent support tool to assist in troubleshooting ConfigMgr. It can collect logs, policys, wmi, registry etc; from remote or local machines. Also includes a log viewer that groups logs by function. I think it will eventually replace CMTrace.

It's in BETA so read the release notes!  Update: It's released!

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42645

 Downl