When Setup fails on the target computer

When there is no message

• Windows Setup has aborted, and only the wallpaper is left on the screen. The Install Assist finished its work and started Setup; Setup then stopped with an error. What you see now depends on the version that built the medium.

  From 0.9.8.4 on: The Install Assist shows the console window again when it ends, on every path, including after an error or a crash. After handing over to Windows Setup it sits behind Setup and can be reached with Alt+Tab; if the assistant ends with an error, it stays in the foreground. That window holds a command prompt, and it also holds the failure report if the assistant itself could not start. From here you reach the logs, see below.

  With media from 0.9.8.3 or earlier: The console stays hidden, and Alt+Tab does not list it. There is no way to reach a command prompt afterwards. Boot from the medium again and, on the next run, take the fallback path in the next point before you click "Yes, erase everything. Go!".

• Fallback path: open a command prompt and start the assistant in a window. While the Install Assist card is on the screen, press Ctrl+Alt+S. The card closes and a command prompt opens. There is no other way to the command prompt; the computer name field accepts only letters, digits and hyphens.

  Then start the assistant from the command prompt in window mode:

  X:\Tools\InstallAssist\install_assist.exe --windowed DRIVE:\ DRIVE:\ X:\
  

  Replace DRIVE with the letter of the installation medium, the drive holding setup.exe and original-autounattend.xml, for example D:\. The letter is not fixed in WinPE; check it with dir D:\ and try the next letters if needed. Both arguments name the same drive because the medium keeps Setup and the answer file in the same place.

  In window mode the assistant does not hide the console. The card appears as a normal window, you confirm in it as usual, and after Setup ends the command prompt is still there. Window mode is a development mode: the window does not fill the screen, and on a small screen you may have to move it.

• The Install Assist does not start at all, and the console shows an exit code. Then the assistant itself failed before Setup ran. The console shows a failure report with the exit code, the program file and the origin of the assistant. The same report is written to the file install_assist_startfehler.txt on the installation medium; if the medium cannot be written to, the file is under X:\.

For support

Copy the logs from the command prompt to the installation medium or to a second drive before you restart the computer:

• X:\Windows\Panther\setupact.log and X:\Windows\Panther\setuperr.log, the Windows Setup logs in WinPE
• C:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther, if Setup has already written to the hard disk
• autounattend.xml from the installation medium, the answer file the assistant wrote
• install_assist_startfehler.txt, if that file was created
• the Setup Foundry version that built the medium, when the error occurred, and a photo of the screen

An example for copying, if the medium is drive D:\:

mkdir D:\logs
copy X:\Windows\Panther\*.log D:\logs\

See also

• Install Assist on the target computer
• Create a USB drive
• Diagnostics and logs