OSD Log File Locations
Troubleshooting OSD deployments can be frustrating. This degrades to downright impossible without logs to reference. Fortunately, we have the smsts.log to guide us. This log resides on the endpoint being built using your task sequence media. Depending on what stage your sequence is at when the failure occurs, the log file will be in one of the following locations (from https://eddwatton.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/some-useful-sccm-osd-log-file-locations/):
- Windows PE before HDD format: x:\windows\temp\smstslog\smsts.log
- Windows PE after HDD format: x:\smstslog\smsts.log and copied to c:\_SMSTaskSequence\Logs\Smstslog\smsts.log
- Full version Windows before SCCM agent installed: c:\_SMSTaskSequence\Logs\Smstslog\smsts.log
- Full version Windows after SCCM agent installed: c:\windows\ccm\logs\Smstslog\smsts.log
- Full version Windows (x64) after SCCM agent installed: c:\windows\sysWOW64\ccm\logs\Smstslog\smsts.log
- After Task Sequence has finished running: c:\windows\ccm\logs\smsts.log
- After Task Sequence has finished running (x64): c:\windows\sysWOW64\ccm\logs\smsts.log
Accessing the Command Prompt during Pre-Boot
You can access a command prompt while in the preboot environment by hitting F8. Once you get a command prompt you can then navigate to the first 2 locations listed above. For the remaining locations, you will already be in the deployed OS, and can access a command prompt as you normally would.
Enabling the Command Prompt in the Pre-Boot Environment
To be able to utilize the F8 shortcut mentioned above, your boot image needs to have command support enabled (see pic below). The built-in default boot images (Boot Images (xXX)) already have command support enabled.