Allmost every time I get a call from a customer, or want to answer a question in the TechNet Forums about OS Deployment, I always start by asking for logfiles.
There are MANY log files when it comes to ConfigMgr 2012 R2, and most of them are normally located in the same folder every time you need them. But when you are troubleshooting OS Deployment using, one of the most common log files you almost always want to check, is the SMSTS.log. And this log file is moving around depending on the phase of the deployment process.
There are plenty of blogs out there about the location of the SMSTS.log, but most of them are not up-to-date (The log files are on longer placed under System32 or SysWOW for 64-bit clients), so here you go:
| Phase | Location |
| Windows PE (Before the hard disk are formatted) |
x:\windows\temp\smstslog\smsts.log |
| Windows PE (After the hard disk are formatted) |
x:\smstslog\smsts.log and copied to c:\_SMSTaskSequence\Logs\Smstslog\smsts.log |
| Windows Operating System (Before the SCCM client is installed) |
c:\_SMSTaskSequence\Logs\Smstslog\smsts.log |
| Windows Operating System (After the SCCM client is installed) |
c:\windows\ccm\logs\Smstslog\smsts.log |
| Windows Operating System (When the Task Sequence is complete) |
c:\windows\ccm\logs\smsts.log |
/Enjoy.
7 Comments
it was very helpful in troubleshooting tas sequence errors.
None of those locations exist on this server…
It’s not on the server. The logfiles are on the client.
Is smsts.log located on one of these paths only when the SCCM client is already installed on client machine or it is not relevant ?
Or in Windows PE…
oddly, the only place I found this smsts.log file is on the first pathway, which says pre-formatting. Yet the issue im having is that after the second boot, it comes up to the windows boot screen, but then fails to bring up windows, and then just restarts the computer. Seems the log should be somewhere on the c; drive in ccm folder. thanks for any thoughts
Thank you!