Some required packages are not available in selected distribution points. Please select more distribution points.‏

[anyweb]

I came across this while building a USB key to do a standalone deployment and the error produced wasn't so helpful so I thought i'd document how to resolve it.

 

 

Error:

Some required packages are not available in selected distribution points. Please select more distribution points.

 

 

Ok, based on the error I tried to select all dp's

 

 

but still it failed with the same message, meaning i could not continue with the wizard. So then I started to troubleshoot the problem:

I checked all packages referenced in my selected task sequence and all showed up ok in package status and the selected distribution point was indeed listed. I updated each package listed in the Task Sequence References on the respective distribution point.

 

I turned to the internet for answers. After a quick search I found no hits so I set about figuring out what the error really meant.

 

I checked my System Status, Component Status and saw that the Distribution Manager logs (SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER) were in a critical state,

 

 

so i selected it and looked at the messages within. There were two errors which caught my attention, Message ID 2302 and 2307.

 

They were telling me that Distribution Manager did not have access to either the package source directory or the distribution point amonst other suggestions.

 

 

So I set about looking at the Package details using the package ID. That revealed the the package source was missing, my own fault, I removed some wim files to free up space on my HyperV laptop and simply forgot about it.

 

I found the missing wim, replaced it, updated the dp and re-ran the wizard, this time all 6 of 6 packages were seen and I could complete the wizard.

 

 

so the lessons learned from this are:-

 

* make sure not to delete something unless you know it won't be used again

* when creating standalone media, make sure X of X packages matches, if it's X-1 of X, or another variant of that then it won't work

 

cheers

niall