How To Execute Scripts in a Task Sequence Without a Local Disk

Posted on January 12, 2013 Updated on January 12, 2013

A common practice for OSD task sequences is set the advertisement to “run from server”.  Recently there was a situation in which the advertisement needed to be set as “download content locally”.  But there were scripts which needed to be executed BEFORE a disk partition existed, so the task sequence would fail with error code 0x800700a1 because there wasn’t a local disk in which to save the files.

There are a few ways to workaround this situation.

1.  If possible, have the advertisement/deployment configured to run from server

2.  Use DISM.exe to add the scripts into the boot image(s) (or use GImageX), then have a Run Command Line task to execute the scripts.
Note: the challenge with this method is it’s a bit tedious to maintain those scripts.

3.  Use the “Connect To Network” task to map to a network drive, then have a Run Command Line task to execute the scripts.
Note: the challenge with this method is the possibility of scripts running across the WAN, which could be less than ideal if the scripts or installers are large or if the network files are not available.