MDT step by step deployment capture not generating wim

Question

New to MDT.

So I am following through the MS step by step guides:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/windows-10-poc

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/windows-10-poc-mdt

I am at step 28 in (in the second guide):

Deploy Windows 10 in a test lab using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

Where the deployment wizard has been launched in a VM on the host system and have watched the process continue for an hour. It finally finishes but it does not create the .wim on the the server share as expected and as referred to in the bootstrap.ini:

Bootstrap.ini
[Settings]
Priority=Default

[Default]
DeployRoot=\\SRV1\MDTBuildLab$
UserDomain=CONTOSO
UserID=MDT_BA
UserPassword=pass@word1
SkipBDDWelcome=YES

I have verified that the share "DeployRoot" exists and can be connected to using the provided credentials and that the share has the correct permissions to create/delete files.

Not sure what I'm missing but my expectation was a .wim should have been created in \srv1\MDTBuildLab$\Captures but there is nothing in that folder.

Just before stopping the deployment wizard reboots several times in quick succession, which to me doesn't appear correct but as I have never witnessed a successful capture I can't say for sure this isn't what's supposed to happen.

I'm not even sure where I can view any log files to figure out why it fails.

Any assistance appreciated!

Further Info:

Activated monitoring. It gets to step 86 of 93. The last thing I see is "Applying WinPE (BD)" or something similar and then it restarts. Then several quick reboots occur (the loading bar appears for a second or two and then reboots) (Which I think are failing) finally it gives up! The process never completes!

When I attempt to mount the client REFW10X64-001.vhdx to check the logs I am greeted with this message

The disk image isn't initialized, contains partitions that aren't recognizable, or contains volumes that haven't been assigned drive letters. Please use the Disk Management snap-in to make sure that the disk, partitions, and volumes are in a usable state.

So it looks like the last step totally screwed the disk! Which would explain the last several boots failing to load anything.

So no errors no warnings, no logs, no finish and no wim generated.

How do I troubleshoot this?

Answer 1

I know this post is old, but the normal behavior would be as follows:

1. Using the boot image, you boot into WinPE
2. The task sequence is started and the OS gets applied to the disk
3. Reboot
4. Boot into full Windows where the task sequence also continues
5. Under full Windows, one of the last steps is that WinPE gets applied again
6. Reboot
7. Computer boots automatically into WinPE
8. The wim file gets created (WinPE is running on the RAM disk and the regular C: drive (and any additional drives) is being mirrored into the wim file)
9. Computer performs the FINISHACTION.

We would need at least BDD.log and smsts.log to further troubleshoot. My guess is that WinPE was not applied correctly.