SCCM task sequence failing on app installations (error 80070652)

I had this problem on a customer site today and I hadn't seen it before. A task sequence failed intermittently (but often) on two particular applications (one was an SCCM application and the other a package/program). These apps had nothing in common, besides being consecutive in the task sequence.

The SMSTS.log file told me that that installations failed because:

Another installation is already in progress. complete that installation before proceeding with this install. (error: 80070652; source: windows)

I really didn't understand this as everything else looked ok in the log file. Palo Alto VPN client and MBAM were the two apps that regularly failed without any obvious reason. The only thing I could see that they had in common was that they closely followed McAfee VirusScan in the task sequence. Like many other ConfigMgr-related issues, could McAfee be the problem?

I looked at the application event log and sure enough I found McAfee-related activity long after it had returned an exit code of 0, thus allowing the task sequence to continue. Further installations were not possible as McAfee was still doing it's thing and the task sequence just failed.

To test my theory I just moved the McAfee installation to the end of the task sequence. That did it and the task sequences all compete successfully now. Happy days.

Guess what? I just left it there where it belongs :)

I hope this is helpful to anyone else who encounters this behaviour. Until next time...

ConfigMgr OSD - use MDT without using MDT

The title may not make much sense but please read on about a recent customer requirement.

Customer requirement

In the task sequence, set the computer name to match the service tag

Solution

Easy - use the OSDComputerName variable with a value of %SerialNumber% (or was it that easy?)

Problem Statement

How does the %SerialNumber% value get populated in this case? This is straightforward if I'm using MDT integration as I can use the Gather step. However, the customer does not have MDT integrated and this would take a few weeks to organize with a strict change request procedure.
So what do I do?

Solution (revised)

Do I actually need MDT integrated or do I just need some MDT files?

I had a word with @ncbrady from @WindowsNoob and we came up with a plan. I installed MDT on a laptop and created a deployment share.

I figured that these files were all that I needed - only 45MB. I copied the files to my content source location and created an MDT Gather package (with no program).
Then I configured the TS as shown in the screenshots.

First I ran ZTIGather.wsf with this command

Cmd.exe /c cscript.exe .\Scripts\ZTIGather.wsf /debug:TRUE

This was to "discover" the service tag.

The next step was to set the hostname to match the serial number (service tag).

Unfortunately the task sequence failed:

"Gathering complete, but no INI file found” with an error code of 0x00001F40

On examining the smsts.log file the hostname was in fact set to the service tag, even though the task sequence failed. Happy days. I was just missing a customsettings.ini file. I manually created a default .ini file and copied it to the scripts folder.

[Settings]
Priority=Default
Properties=MyCustomProperty
[Default]
OSInstall=Y
SkipCapture=YES
SkipAdminPassword=NO
SkipProductKey=YES

That did it - SUCCESS. Thanks for the assistance Niall.

Until next time.......

Edit #1:

Jörgen Nilsson has contacted me to say that only a few of the MDT files are actually required (less than 800KB). Here they are:

Thanks Jörgen.

Edit #2:

I've had some feedback about other ways to set the computer name to the service tag without using MDT. Thanks for that. However, the whole point of this post was to show how you can achieve MDT functionality without actually integrating MDT with ConfigMgr.

After all, the title is "Use MDT without using MDT".