Monthly Archives: June 2014

Microsoft Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2965788), which was released on June 10, 2014, as one of that month’s Patch Tuesday updates and titled MS14-030: Description of the security update for Remote Desktop Security Release for Windows: June 10, 2014, appears to cause multiple restarts when applied during the Install Software Updates step within a System Center Configuration Manager Task Sequence. The second restart is not controlled by the Task Sequence engine and causes the engine to be unable to resume the Task Sequence when the computer comes back up after the second restart. The Task Sequence therefore fails to complete.

This behavior is a known issue with software updates that require multiple restarts, as documented in KB2894518, titled Task sequence fails in Configuration Manager if software updates require multiple restarts.

At my firm, we deploy Software Updates and other application updates during a maintenance Task Sequence. When the Task Sequence fails to complete after the Install Software Updates step, the TSManager component writes the following entries to smsts.log:

Failed to restore logs from cache. Execution history may be lost.
...
Failed to locate the local data path. The files needed to resume the task sequence are missing.  This could be because the task sequence finished while in Windows PE.  Please check the largest available partition for SMSTSLog\smsts.log file for more information.
The system cannot find the file specified. (Error: 80070002; Source: Windows)
Task Sequence Manager could not initialize Task Sequence Environment. code 80070002
Task sequence execution failed with error code 80070002
...
Error executing Task Sequence Manager service. Code 0x80070002
MP name must be set in an environment variable
Non fatal error 0x80004005 in sending task sequence execution status message to MP
Successfully finalized logs to SMS client log directory from C:\Windows\CCM\Logs

Microsoft’s recommendation in KB2894518 is to deploy updates that require multiple restarts outside of a Task Sequence. If you choose to deploy hotfix KB2965788 as a traditional package or an application using a required deployment, it can be downloaded from Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2965788).