Support Tip: Task Sequence in ConfigMgr 2012 fails at "Resolving Task Sequence Dependencies" step with error code 80072EFE

~ Prabhat Joshi

Hi everyone, Prabhat Joshi here again with another Configuration Manager support tip for you. The issue today is one where a Task Sequence in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager fails during the "Resolving Task Sequence Dependencies" step with error code 80072EFE. The entries in the SMSTS.LOG file will look something similar to this:

Downloading policy body ABC-GRRXYZ18-GRR00026-DBBBC9D6
Preparing Policy Body Request
Setting transport.
Setting policy location = http://<mp>/SMS_MP/.sms_pol?DEP-GRR20318-GRR00026-DBBBC9D6.1_00.
CLibSMSMessageWinHttpTransport::Send: URL: name.domain.com GET /SMS_MP/.sms_pol?ABC-GRRXYZ18-GRR00026-DBBBC9D6.1_00
Failed to receive response with winhttp; 80072efe
Failed to download policy ABC-GRRXYZ18-GRR00026-DBBBC9D6 (Code 0x80072efe).
Failed to resolve selected task sequence dependencies. Code(0x80072EFE)
ThreadToResolveAndExecuteTaskSequence failed. Code(0x80072EFE)

Even though you get this error, you’ll likely observe that the Management Point (MP) is working fine, the Network Access account is working and specified with the correct password, and that the network drivers are properly added in the boot image being used by the Task Sequence. The Task sequence dependencies are on the DP and you’re able to ping the machine from client machine in WinPE environment.

So what’s causing the issue?

We can see from the SMSTS.LOG file that we get error code 80072EFE while making the HTTP connection from clients, so if we do an error lookup on this we find the following:

# Anonymous HRESULT: Severity: FAILURE (1), Facility 0x7, Code 0x2efe
# for hex 0x2efe / decimal 12030
ERROR_INTERNET_CONNECTION_ABORTED inetmsg.h
ERROR_WINHTTP_CONNECTION_ERROR winhttp.h
ERROR_INTERNET_CONNECTION_ABORTED wininet.h
# 3 matches found for "80072efe"

That doesn’t really tell us a lot so in order to further understand the problem and dig further we can take a Network Monitor (netmon) trace from the MP server when a machine PXE boots and see what we get. In this case you’ll see packets similar to the ones below when filtering on the IP address of the client machine:

What this basically shows us is that the connection from the client computer is getting reset by the MP as soon as it acknowledges it. When you see something like this, the first thing you’ll want to do check for third party filter drivers on the MP. You can do this by running the Fltmc command from an elevated command prompt (Run As Administrator).

You may see several filters returned. On a recent case I worked we saw output that looked like this:

So the next thing to do is try unloading them one by one to see if that fixes the problem. You can attempt to unload a filter using this command:

Fltmc unload <filter driver name>

For example:

Fltmc unload SymEFA

In this case we found that the filter driver causing our problem was a Symantec extended file attributes (EFA) system driver file (SymEFA) so we uninstalled the Symantec software from the MP and tried PXE boot again. This time it worked. It turns out that the version of this software on the MP as out of date so we installed the newest version of Symantec, tested again and it continued to work just fine.

SUMMARY

If you have a Task Sequence that is failing during the "Resolving Task Sequence Dependencies" step with error code 80072EFE, take a look at the filter drivers installed on your Management Point. For troubleshooting purposes, try removing each filter driver and see if the problem remains. If the issue no longer occurs, use a process of elimination to determine which driver is causing the problem, then be sure to upgrade that driver to the latest version and that should get everything working as expected again.

Prabhat Joshi| Technical Lead | Microsoft

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