I’ve seen this time and time again and the only solution that worked for us was to create this media on a Configmgr console installed on a Windows XP computer.
Today however I tried to create another key (64GB) in Windows 7 with the Configmgr Console by choosing Create Standalone Media and pointing it to the drive letter that the USB key (64gb) had taken,
the process bombed out quite soon in the process after clicking Finish and you are advised to look at the CreateTSMedia.log file (on the computer you installed the console on, typically in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Configuration Manager Console\AdminUI\AdminUILog, in there you’ll probably see the following errors (in bold below)
Beginning media generation
Partition activated
Format failed (0x8004242D)
Error formatting volume E:\ (0x8004242d)
Failed to create media (0x8004242d) CreateTsMedia 2011-09-21 15:00:03 4772 (0x12A4)
CreateTsMedia failed with error 0x8004242d, details=””
I tried some diskpart commands to clean the USB key and preformat it, no dice, but then I decided to shrink the Volume to less than 32GB,
using the following commands
sel dis #
clean
cre par pri
sel par 1
active
shrink desired=30000 minimum=30000
format fs=ntfs quick
exit
The magical line is the one in bold above, it creates the 30gb partition and now when you try to create standalone media in Windows 7 it works just fine,
- Downside #1 Your 64GB (or greater) key will now have a small partition, but you can add more or change it back later using diskpart
- Downside #2 if your task sequence media add’s up to more than 32g you’ll need to use the XP process again,
it seems that when you create standalone media in XP the wizard prompts you to have formatted the USB key in Windows Vista or Later os’s, so you can format it as a 64gb NTFS partition in Windows 7 and then the Console in XP will happily fill the key with your packages etc (ie: it doesn’t FORMAT the key !).
However, when you do the same thing in a configMgr console in Windows 7 it doesnt know how to deal with the key if it’s partition is greater than 32GB and bombs out of the process. Change the partition size to less than 32gb and it works…
related reading:-
1. Problems Creating USB Media with Windows 7 – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/steverac/archive/2010/10/11/problems-creating-usb-media-with-windows-7.aspx
2. How to create offline or standalone USB media for OS Deployment in ConfigMgr 2007 – http://blogs.technet.com/b/configurationmgr/archive/2011/05/05/how-to-create-offline-or-standalone-usb-media-for-os-deployment-in-configmgr-2007.aspx
Update: I’ve seen this exact same failure in Windows 8 using a 64GB key using Configuration Manager 2012 SP1, however once I applied the above 30gb partition all was ok.
cheers
niall
