Eswar Koneti's Blog

when I advertise the TS on computers ,it failes because of various reasons and could not able to identify the reason for the faliure.So i decied to look into the SCCM default report for the particular Task sequence.the report doesnt give you all the full information just the task name where it failed.So later someother day fould an easy way to look into the smsts.log .Whenyou advertise the any Task sequence onto the computers in WIN PE environment ,you may encounter some of the tasks which fails in the begining.How do you identify the reason for the failure of Task.you can do the in the WIN PE session starts.But to view the logs and other stuff ,you should have enable “enable command prompt support (for testing only)” on theboot image that you select in booting up in SCCM.

Once the WINPE session starts ,press F8 and it gives you the command prompt support with the default path like x:\windows

Usually the logs will the stored in X:\Windows\Temp\SMSTSLog\ or C:\SMSTSLog or C:\_SMSTaskSequence.Now i want to see the smsts.log which is present in x:\windows\temp\smstslog.

Type cd temp\smstslog command prompt looks like below now x:\windows\temp\smstslog If you want to open the smsts.log which is present in smstslog folder ,just do notepad smsts.log,it will open the .log file in notepad which is not good to read /identify the errors.Lets move onto the next step by connecting the network share to copy the log files onto.

on the command prompt x:\windows\temp\smstslog  just type net use k: \\192.168.10.15\soft (Where k: drive letter to map and soft is folder on the share to copy the log files) .It prompt you for the use name and password. Provide user name(ex:eskon\xoluser) and password (which is invisble) where xsoluser should have write permission to the above share and eskon is a domian.when you enter the credentials,it gives you maessage connected successfully.In the commnd prompt i.e x:\windows\temp\smstslog type copy smsts.log  K:\ .you will see 1 file copied sucessgully.You can open the smsts.log with trace32.exe which you can get if you install SMS/SCCM tool kit from microsoft.