Windows 10 Blueprint deployment finishes with nonfunctional start menu

[adrianPekar]

Hi guys,

do you have any experience with Windows 10 blueprints? We use vRA7.0.1. All Guest OSes (Linux, Windows, etc.) work without problem (deployment, customization, orchestrator custom workflows, etc.) however, with W10 we experience a strange problem:

When cloning in vCenter 6 U2 a W10 reference image (from a template) the cloning ends successfully with a fully functional W10 guest OS. However, when using the same template in vRA7 in a blueprint (clone) for a VM request, although the VM is created, the OS is only partly functional, i.e. nor the Windows start menu neither the windows search box is working. When checking the Sysprep logs, I can see a Sysprep setupdigetclassdevs failed with error 0 message.

Any idea? 

[HariRajan]

Actually i don't know the reason , but thought of helping you by asking some questions .

Are you running vra guest agent on the template ? , any patching software running on this machine (like lumension) .

have you used the latest hardware version 11 by bind the property VMware.Hardware.Version ? . Please ensure windows update is disabled and no pending update in the template

Also whether it is a linked clone or full clone ? . If linked clone try to do a full clone.

'

I am expecting some more help for you from others .

[adrianPekar]

Hi Hari,

thank you for the questions-suggestions.

I tried both versions: with and without guest agent installed in W10. Neither of them resolved the issue. The W10 is right after clean install (Windows 10 Pro N 1511 from - image updated by MS in February 2016). The only thing installed is VM Tools build n.: 10246, no other software components are installed. Windows updates are disabled, no pending updates are present in the reference VM.

Our VMware infrastructure is up to date, i.e. vCenter, vRA, vRO, ESXis, all of them are updated to the most current version. VM version is the most current one. The OS is set to W10 64bit. So everything is as should be.

Actually, I have made a bit debugging. I think that the issue is related to sysprep (note that I am not a Windows guru). Although I am not sysprepping the reference VM before converting to template, when deploying via vRA, the sysprep logs show the above mentioned 'Sysprep setupdigetclassdevs failed with error 0'.

[HariRajan]

yes , to isolate the issue , it should be related with sysprep , it may failing . have you set the h/w version property .

I think you need to spend some more time with that,  I have faced such issues in windows 7 where sysprep is failing because of filtering application such as DLP and Lumension.

just uninstalled and tried and it starts working.

[HariRajan]

yes , to isolate the issue , it should be related with sysprep , have you set the h/w version property .

I think you need to spend some more time with that,  I have faced such issues in windows 7 where sysprep is failing because of filtering application such as DLP and Lumension.

just uninstalled and tried and it starts working.

[darrenoid]

Hello Adrian,

I have seen this same symptom in our lab. In our case it was a problem with Windows 10 apps from the store. Apparently if you login as a user at anytime it is possible Windows will automatically install apps from the store for only that user. Sysprep tries to remove all apps, but cannot remove apps installed for a single user. To see if this is your issue check C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\panther\SetupErr.log. Read more about it here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2769827

You can remove the package you see mentioned in SetupErr.log with Remove-AppxPackage, but beware, sysprep only shows the first package it failed on. There may be more packages to delete.

I had a hard time trying to remove the packages and/or delete the user to fix this. We ended up re-provisioning the VM template from scratch making sure no additional user ever logged in. We use MDT and that was able to install a clean image from start to finish without installing any apps.

Regards,

Darrenoid