Let me first state that this is not necessarily a problem with MDT 2008 or ConfigMgr, but has to do with setting share-level permissions.  So who should be responsible for doing that?  The product (automated), or the admin (manually)?

So let’s walk through creating the problem and how to resolve it…

	Create an MDT boot image
	Provide the package source location Note: This is key, so remember this for later!!
	Give the boot image package a name in the General Settings dialog box
	Set the image options Note: These are just the options I selected, you can choose your own.
	After selecting the image options and clicking Next, the wizard proceeds with creating the boot image WIM in the package source location and making it into a package
	…however, the wizard eventually fails, stating that there is an error importing the MDT Task Sequence into the WIM

So what is happening here?

The wizard goes through the process of creating the WIM and the last step is to import the MDT Task Sequence into the WIM.  This “importing” step is actually not handled by the site server, but by the SMS Provider.  So which ever site system server has the SMS Provider installed, is the one responsible for importing the MDT Task Sequence.

“So what’s the problem?” you ask…

PROBLEM: In my environment, the SMS Provider is NOT installed on the site server, but on the remote SQL Server. In order for the MDT Boot Image wizard to execute successfully importing the MDT Task Sequence into the WIM-file, the configuration requires that the remote SQL Server in my environment (or whatever site system server has the SMS Provider installed) has permissions to access the UNC path for the package source and modify permissions to the actual WIM-file itself.

“So what does this actually mean?” you ask…

WORKAROUND:  This requires modifying the “share/folder/file”-level permissions of the UNC path for the package source.  If you remember earlier, I said to remember or note the UNC path used for the package source folder. 

Here’s what I did to implement the workaround…

	View the share-level permissions of the package source folder (e.g. \\NMCM02\IMAGES)
	Change the ACL’s on the share, granting the computer account of the site system server where the SMS Provider is installed, change (e.g. RWXD or Co-owner since this is W2K8) permission to the share.  In my environment, this is NMSQL02$. Since I’m using Windows Server 2008, the share-permissions dialog box looks different from W2K3.
	As seen here, after modifying the share-level permissions and re-running the wizard Create Boot Image using Microsoft Deployment, the MDT boot images will be created.

Take a look at some other blog entries I’ve made that provide solutions for issues where the SMS Provider is not installed locally on the ConfigMgr site server.

• MDT 2008: Error occurred integrating with ConfigMgr
• Installing Shopping Central when SMS Provider is NOT hosted on ConfigMgr site server

Troy L. Martin | Senior Consultant | 1E |

troy.martin@1e.com | www.1e.com