Fix SCCM Task sequence has failed with the error code 0x800700A1

ByPrajwal Desai Hours

In this post, I will show you how to resolve SCCM Task sequence has failed with the error code 0x800700A1. The error 0x800700A1 appears during SCCM OSD and translates to “The specified path is invalid.”

One of our customer decided to go with brand-new range of dell latitude laptops. The customer is running SCCM integrated with MDT. The moment they started imaging the laptops using SCCM, they got an error. Task sequence has failed with the error code 0x800700A1. For more information, contact your system administrator or help desk operator.

This error code 0x800700A1 was observed while imaging new laptops only. On other old laptops, the operating system deployment worked flawlessly.

During imaging, a task sequence could fail due to many reasons. Whenever a task sequence fails, it fails with an error code. In addition, you must always review smsts.log file during OSD to track the errors.

Probably the hard disk format on new laptops is not something that SCCM likes. In other words before a package that gets cached to the hard disk, the disk needs to be formatted properly.

SCCM Task sequence has failed with the error code 0x800700A1

The SCCM task sequence Error code 0x800700A1 translates to disk being RAW formats. If you don’t partition the disk, the task sequence will fail with error code 0x800700A1.

If the partition is in RAW format, it is always recommended formatting it before the OSD. Below is the screenshot of the error.

Task sequence has failed with the error code 0x800700A1
Task sequence has failed with the error code 0x800700A1

To fix the error task sequence has failed with the error code 0x800700A1, you could try the below steps. Basically, we use a list of diskpart commands to format the disk.

In addition, here is the link for diskpart commands and diskpart command line options. First of all in the WinPE environment, press F8 which brings up the command prompt.

Run the following commands (in order) to fix error code 0x800700A1.

diskpart
list disk (lists the disks)
select disk 0 (0 being the disk to set up)
clean (wipes the disk)
create partition primary (creates windows partition)
select partition 1
format quick fs=NTFS (Format primary partition)
assign letter C
exit

After performing the above steps, restart the machine and try the OSD again. This time you shouldn’t see the task sequence failing with error 0x800700A1.

Avatar photo

Prajwal Desai is a Microsoft MVP in Intune and SCCM. He writes articles on SCCM, Intune, Windows 365, Azure, Windows Server, Windows 11, WordPress and other topics, with the goal of providing people with useful information.

29 Comments

  1. Avatar photo Daniel Pina says:

    Thanks for this guide

  2. Avatar photo Anonymous says:

    DUDE THANK YOU! Not sure if we’re dealing with the same customer or not but this was awesome to find and resolve my identical issue!

  3. I’m new in this and I haven’t try it yet but I’d like to know if I do it this will erase all the information and programs in my disk? Thanks for your advice

  4. Avatar photo Ben DUNCAN says:

    Thank you Prajwal, this has resolved an issue I have been having most of today. Your advice worked perfectly. Much respect.
    Regards,

  5. I just changed, the running order in my tasksequence. I moved my script after the “Format and Partition” step, That fixed it as well

  6. Hi Prajwal,
    similar error recently I faced during PXE deployment image on VMs with 1909 image ( on the vary first step Front UI). win10 1809 is working perfectly.
    while I check other existing VMs and try to deploy the both image 1809 & 1909 are working. So I can’t decide where could be the issue because neither the existing test VM require to DISKPART though working with both images. and the newly created VM i have done DISKPART too but same issues and can’t even think it’s VM issue because 1809 is working.

    Please share some input on this scenario.

    Thanks,
    Sinha

  7. Hi, I have known about this fix for a while (found on your site I expect). Do you know of a way we can automate this process for when we are doing Laptop rebuilds?

    1. You can use a prestart command in the boot image that points to a diskpart script. You would place the commands above into a text file that lives on a network share somewhere. Then, open the properties of the boot image in SCCM, select the customization tab. For the command line section, enter “diskpart /S yourscriptname.txt”, check the box to include files, and select the network share with the location of the script.

      Keep in mind this kicks off before you select the task sequence in the imaging process, so you must be absolutely sure that you are ready to wipe the machine as soon as you enter your imaging password.

  8. Avatar photo Per-Ã…ke Andersson says:

    Another solution for this error can be to change SATA operation from RAID to AHCI. It did in my case!

  9. nice post

  10. Avatar photo Rune Garmann says:

    Thank You! This made my day!

  11. Avatar photo Developer MacBooks says:

    This worked… Thank you!!

  12. It’s working for me. Thanks a lot for your post.
    keep it up. Good work

  13. Trying to create partition primary, I receive an error that reads “DiskPart has encountered an error: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. See the system event log for more information.”
    Any Ideas?

  14. After I write the first four lines from the above, I get an error that says “Virtual Disk Service Error: There is not enough usable space for this operation.”
    This doesn’t make sense to me because the command “clean” would wipe the disk that I selected to clean. I ran the commands multiple times and am still getting this error. Any suggestions?

      1. I’m actually not 100% if it is. It was imaged at one point. However, as I was working on it slowed down a lot. So I decided to re-image the machine and that is when I came across this message.

  15. Avatar photo Eleazar Rosario says:

    Thanks for the post, based on your suggestion I discovered my hard drive was not being detected, I switched SATA ports, It formatted and imaged as expected.

  16. “create primary partition” should be “create partition primary”

  17. Hi,

    I also get the error. I wrote a PS script to chose the disk in OSD when there are multiple disks. So I can prevent to format wrong disk. Unfortunately I have to run the script before the disk gets formated. Any other idea to run the script except copying it to Boot WIM?

    Thank you for your help.

  18. Avatar photo Erik Nettekoven says:

    This “before a package that gets cached to the hard disk, the disk needs to be formatted properly.” fixed it for me. I accidentally had put a package before the formatting of the disk in my TS order.

    As soon as I placed the package after the formatting disk step, the error went away.

    2. Hello Erik, that piece of information really helped me out! Many thanks for that golden nugget of information.

    3. Avatar photo Anders M. Nordli says:

      Yeah! Thanks for this! This was the problem I had too. I had accidentally put an extra package in front of the format step. Removed it and problem solved! 🙂

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