OSD Task Sequence decides to take a break

[Embalmed]

Hello,

I've been dealing with a problem that I have considerable trouble searching for. My Windows 10 task sequence will just pause, and hang for approximately 50 minutes. It will be during package installations, downloads will be clean, they will start and then go dormant. The time usually is about 50 minutes in duration, and I initially thought it was a specific package. When I moved it to a different position in order, the issue moved to another install.

So far I have only seen this once per task sequence, and it only seems to be during packages. They will download fine and then start the install.

I've tweaked power settings and I am running high performance during the sequence. I can watch the screen, sometimes it wakes up if I just hit a key on the keyboard or open and close the console window. Nothing really seemed to jump out on the logs.

I was wondering if someone had an idea where to look.

Editing for more detail, here goes.

Currently our production image is the typical base image with the typical "must haves" to work in our environment. The front end for the task sequence will present a choice of configurations, which in turn adds the completed machine to a more customized collection. Licensed apps will have their own collections, one app per collection, etc. After the task sequence, detection logic would kick in and install the licensed apps and whatever else was assigned. Typically we put Lync 2013 in the task sequence, so everything gets it, but that presented an issue with machines that received the full Office install. All sorts of hurt happens when we install office on top of a machine with Lync. Under previous licensing agreements, we had office in the task sequence and it just stacked the order appropriately. The solution for a while was to have the Office install strip Lync and then an open deployment would come back and reinstall. This works, but not cleanly, and techs would end up sitting there hammering the config manager actions to force patching and installs.

It wasn't terribly difficult to build a script to intercept these choices and set a dynamic variable to trigger an install mid task sequence. There wasn't a lot of documentation out there, but it wasn't hard to figure out. The dynamic variables are triggering application installs. What I have found out so far, is that package installs downstream of this are VERY picky. The simplest packages (copy files) appear to run through without any incident. When it hangs, it seems to pick the same packages, and it does it once per TS. The behavior is shown as "Waiting for job status notification..." for 50 minutes as mentioned before. Interacting, hitting enter, space bar, will seem to get the ball rolling.

Moving the dynamic install and lync to the tail end of the task sequence has worked in a few tests. I will continue to pursue this, and I will also prepare for the contingency of dumping the dynamic variable and just making individual installs for each version and gate them with a single task sequence variable. I was hoping to make something easily scaled, but having an anchor that forces things to the end feels like I am just pushing it off till later.