Intelligent Provisioning wants Autounattend.xml, retaining settings

[ii555]

Hello,

The other day we installed Win 2012 Essentials using Intelligent Provisioning.  Now we need to repeat the process on the same server, and it's not working.

1) Intelligent Provisioning no longer asks for the following:
 * Initial Network Settings
 * EULA
 * Activate Intelligent Provisioning
 * Register for Insight Remote Support

2) After Intelligent Provisioning gathers info on the OS, and management protocols, updates the firmware, copies the WinPE files, reboots, loads WinPE, and runs maybe 50 commands on the console CLI (see attached), it displays this window and stops:
 * Title bar: hpssbem
 * Content: The following answer file could not be located: C:\autounattend.xml

We checked the root of C: and X:; there is now autounattend.xml file in either.

We suspect those two things are related. On our very first run through, Intelligent Provisioning stopped around the same place (error unrecorded). In the Initial Network Settings, we changed from static IPs to DHCP, ran it again, and it worked (no idea why). Now it's not even asking for Initial Network Settings (where does it store them?).


Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

[ii555]

EDIT: This did not solve the problem after all. See the following post.

Well, we solved the problem, but it makes no sense:

1) Recall that we had a problem on our first run-through several days ago, and we resolved it by enabling DHCP for the NICs in Initial Network Settings (they had been reporting 169.* addresses, even though we configured valid static IPs; we don't know why that mattered to Intelligent Provisioning).

2) Today, when the problem first occurred, we had disconnected the patch cable (because we have no reason to put an unpatched server on the network), and on a later attempt, we attached the cable but to a network with no DHCP server.

3) Remember that today, Intelligent Provisioning stopped asking for Initial Network Settings. Perhaps it retained the old settings, using DHCP for the NICs.

4) Finally, we enabled a DHCP server on the same network as the server. It worked, Windows is now installed.

But I don't understand: Why does Intelligent Provisioning need a DHCP, a valid IP, or any network at all? And what does that have to do with answer files (i.e., autounattend.xml)?

Perhaps this post will save someone else a long, frustrating day.

[ii555]

Unfortunately, I spoke too soon. We needed to run it again, and this time our fix above did not work. We even checked network connectivity by running a firmware update and verifying the IP addresses of the NICs.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[gemmy74]

I ran the latest version of Intelligent provisioning and ran into the same problem.

I have installed Windows 2008R2 SP1 before and it worked fine running Intelligent Provisioning on ver 1.60.

[ii555]

Based on skimming our old notes, it looks like it worked after we used the ACU to create 2 logicial drives instead of having Intelligent Provisioning partition the drive. Note that Intelligent Provisioning generated the following error, which we ignored (i.e., we clicked 'Continue').

"The configured partition of 92151 MB is less than the minimum size of 180224 MB for the selected operating system. Are your sure you want to continue?"

However, I can't promise that is the solution because the problem seems intermittent; maybe we were just lucky.

Good luck!

[alanm77]

we ran into this exact issue, knew this issue was related to special characters in company name but its more widespread because the install also fails if you have a special character in the initial administrator password

[KeefyD-TF]

I too have experienced thsi problem - by simply removing the special character in the Admin password it all worked - took me 3 attempts to get to this solution though :)

Other posts suggest using DHCP but i have static setup and it is fine.