Windows 10 2004 OS Upgrade Task Sequence - Progress UI Issues

Question

I have a very straightforward OS upgrade task sequence for Windows 10 1903 to 2004. As we're lucky(?) to be using Dell machines there's no version specific drivers to worry about, but I wanted to ensure the BIOS on each machine was updated prior to running the OS upgrade.

I set up a BIOS task sequence a couple of months before the start of the OS upgrade and this has been progressing well, although quite a few remote machines are turned on infrequently so there's still a few hundred not updated. I added the BIOS TS as a child at the start of the OS upgrade TS, and both jobs run successfully BUT after the BIOS reboot there's no progress UI for the OS upgrade and an error in the smsts.log along the lines of:

'Unable to create an instance of the Progress UI COM Object. 0x8000401a'

I tried adding the steps from the BIOS TS into the main body of the OS upgrade TS as well with (unsurprisingly) the same result. I can obviously keep the 2 task sequences as separate jobs, but I'm curious if this is common or unexpected behaviour.

Currently running CM1910 with Hotfix

Thoughts?

Cheers, RIch

Answer 1

The TS Progress UI only launches if a user is logged in.
If the TS is running, and the BIOS Update process reboots the machine, the TSProgressUI will NOT show on top of the logon screen.
When a user logs on, it will not show the TS Progress UI... UNTIL... the next step in the Task Sequence.

Since this is a Upgrade TS, odds are good that by the time you log back in, the TS is already running and on the Upgrade Step itself, which means, you will NOT see the TS Progress UI until it pops the "Restarting Computer" Dialog.

It should return after the Setup Step is complete, and display any additional items you have in your TS after the upgrade step