Intune Autopilot does not come up after reimage the hard drive with the base Windows 11 OS

Question

We rolled out 142 Windows 11 Business machines using Intune Autopilot.

For each machine, we had to reimage each hard drive, changing the default OS from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Then, they would start up to take on the AutoPilot we configured in our Intune. All machines were successfully deployed.

However, I just ran into an issue. One machine was returned from our store back to IT dept because the entire machine was soaked in water due a water leak from the store's ceiling. When the machine was back to IT depart. in head office, we turned it on successfully, and it appeared to be still working fine. However, we don't want to just ship the same machine back to the store just in case the water leak might have already killed a certain life span of the machine.

We used another good-condition (hardware) machine that previously went through the Autopilot already. We first of all used Intune to "Wipe" the machine. After the "Wipe", the machine's hostname disappeared from Intune's Device list. However, I noticed that the machine's hostname on the other side still exists in the Azure AD (Microsoft Entra ID) portal. Using the machine serial number, I also looked up the Windows AutoPilot Devices list. The serial number is listed with a Profile Status as "Fix pending". When clicking on "Fix pending", I got a pop-up message as the following

"Device MJ0HXXXX has a fix pending

We've detected a hardware change on this device. We're trying to automatically register the new hardware. You don't need to do anything now; the status will be updated at the next check in with the result;a href="https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2169163">Learn more about resetting the profile.</a></value>"

The good machine was formerly autopiloted with the same base OS image which is dumped onto the machine's hard drive by the same procedures taking out the hard drive, cloning the image, and then reinserting the hard drive back onto the machine. It just this time is not the first time. It's the second time for this machine. After the first time Autopilot, the machine was Windows-updated to its latest version and build of Windows 11.

I am not sure where the issue is now, and the autopilot is not coming up. Is that because Intune somehow recently recognized the action of taking and reinserting the hard drive also a hardware change?

Since the old hostname of the machine still exists Azure AD (Microsoft Entra ID) portal and the Autopilot will be renamed to the same hostname, will the be a problem? Do I suppose to delete the old hostname from Azure AD prior to my second Autopilot?

What exactly does the above message mean? Do I really no need to do anything and wait for Intune to automatically fix the detected hardware change for me, then I run Autopilot again? Now the Autopilot just won't come up.

Answer 1

@Woody Chiu at RASI Thanks for posting in our Q&A.

Honestly, I haven't met this situation. Based on my search, I find this similar issue recorded in the official article:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/autopilot/troubleshoot-device-enrollment#autopilot-profile-not-applied-after-reimaging-to-an-older-os-version

It is not needed to delete the old hostname from Azure AD. Manually deleting the device from Azure AD may cause unexpected problems, issues, and behavior. It is suggested to try to deregister the target device and reregister this device.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/autopilot/autopilot-motherboard-replacement

Hope it will help.

---

If the answer is the right solution, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Answer 2

Sometimes when you redeploy computer, or hardware changes, you need to re-create the hash and then it is a good idea to delete Entra device account as well. After that you need to re-deploy device hash to Intune as well. I have seen this happening few times, that device hash is stuck forever until you delete Device from Entra.