0x800700A1 when running command line task in SCCM 2012 OSD

Today in my SCCM 2012 lab I was troubleshooting a task sequence error in regards to source being unavailable. It is a very simple task sequence deploying Windows 7, the only custom step I placed in it was a vbscript I wrote to programatically determine or prompt for the computer name. The error was immediately presenting as soon as my “Run Command Line” task came up. Upon hitting F8 and running CMtrace (thank you Microsoft for putting that in the boot images natively!) I navigated to the SMSTS log found at X:\Windows\TEMP\SMSTS\smsts.log (while in the PE)

task sequence failed to resolve the source for SMS PKGID= 0x800700a1

Here’s what I looked at:

Made sure that I had configured the network access account for the site
Made sure my package had been distributed to the distribution point
Made sure I could access it from the distribution point with the NAA account..wait a second, where is it anyway in 2012?

Here is where some reading may be required. Here is an article that regards the differences between the content library in 2012 and how packages were distributed in 2007. http://blogs.technet.com/b/hhoy/archive/2012/05/31/an-adventure-in-the-sccmcontentlib-single-instance-store.aspx

In the end, I had to ensure all packages referenced by the task sequence were in fact being copied to shares on the distribution point. For this specific example I chose a specific share, but you shouldn’t have to do that.

Once I made that change, the task sequence deployment option could be set to “Access content directly from a distribution point when needed by the running task sequence”. I needed to this because when running a task that needs to access package content before the local disk is partitioned there is nowhere to download the data to, so it must be run directly from the distribution point.