I have many customers who have experienced the same issue deploying 64-bit Windows 7 using a 32-bit boot image. The error has not been consistent either the Apply Driver Package step fails and the DISM log file indicates that it cannot read the Software Hive from the registry or the machine blue-screen on first boot.
Rebuilding the master image has solved the problem. I have one customer who logged a case with Microsoft Support and got this solution that works great!
Thanks Ola Ahrens for sharing!!
The issue
WinPe tries compacting the offline registry and fails to commit the registry hives back to disk.
This problem only happen when you deploy windows 7 and use WinPe 5.0 or 5.1, 32 bit, to deploy the image.
Note: Sccm 2012 R2 and higher uses winpe 5.0 or higher to deploy os images.
Resolution
Create a Value in WinPE
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager
Name: RegistryReorganizationLimitDays
Datatype: DWORD
Value: 365
This value has the effect that the registry hives are not compacted as long as the modified date of the hives is not older than a year.
When you intend to use the deployment longer than a year, a higher value must be chosen.
Hi
I had the same issue but only on systems with 16GB Ram and more. I used the same solution found here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/dip/archive/2015/01/21/win2008r2-win7-stop-0xf4-during-task-sequence-os-deployment.aspx
In my case:
I have seen in my dism.log that WinPE was not able to load the registry “failed to load offline store”. My guess was that the issue is related to this model having a large amount of memory. In my case, the system was my only hardware model with 16GB of RAM. All other models have 4GB or 8GB and none of them have this issue.
For testing I removed the half of RAM (8GB) and the driver injection went well. Without setting the registry key described above!!!
Then I added the registry key into my WinPE boot image and plugged all my 16GB RAM back into my target system. Everything went well now
Does not compacting the hives leave the computer in an undesirable state? Does this compacting happen on its own later on?
Thank you,
Gary
I’ve mounted my Windows PE image and i only have the “ControlSet001” key. Will adding the above work if added here??
Hi! Thanks for this solution. But when do you create the key? During Task Sequence with a reg import step? Can you explain in more detail, please? We actually have this problem and are searching for a resolution. Thanks!
Dietmar