Forum Discussion
Windows Autopilot Error Code 0x800705b4 Preparing device for mobile management
i_ARQ Yes this is 100% what I'm seeing. I had a ticket open with Microsoft and they said they would reflect this to the technical team. I tried to make it as clear as possible to my support technician and summarized the problem in one sentence. "Prepare Windows and Configmgr" step in the SCCM task sequence breaks autopilot provisioning, no matter what method is used to remove the client.
I've had to move our autopilot for existing devices task sequence to the "faster" V2 method which doesn't install the SCCM client or sysprep the machine, and this involved basically rejigging the entire onboarding infrastructure, which we haven't touched in about two years. Having to cast my mind back and re-implement critical infrastructure from years ago was extremely annoying. I really hope Microsoft will acknowledge that this issue exists and provide some form of response. As it stands, their official docs for existing device flow for autopilot is broken.
I also run the "faster" v2 method but it doesn't really allow me to customize things on the image because it bypasses installing the ccm client and I can't install other apps I want on the base.
But I think I may have found the registry key that might be causing the issue.
When it was at the autopilot "Preparing device for mobile management autopilot" step.. it tends to sit there untill the timeout reaches the limit and it gives that error. I opened a command prompt with Shift +F10 to view the registry and check for keys left by the ccm client.
I deleted some keys and forced a restart during autopilot.. and when it rebooted it finally got passed that step without any errors.
I now added a step in my sccm image to delete the keys at the end of the deployment. Hopefully that resolves the issue when it boots into autopilot.
keep you posted.
- That sounds great, please keep me posted.
derekuoft
When I open a command prompt (SHIFT + F10) during autopilot, I found that deleting the following reg keys seemed to help the device get past that error (needed to initiate a restart after deleting the keys though)HKLM\software\microsoft\DeviceManageabilityCSP
HKLM\software\microsoft\ccmsetup
Maybe these leftover SCCM reg keys are being flagged by Autopilot and it generates the error we see?
Just wondering what version of OS you are using when you image your devices? I'm using 20H2. I know there were issues with 1903 and 1909 that required you to add extra steps to the task sequence. Might need extra steps to remove these reg keys, but I haven't found a way to do that successfully yet.
Another forum said this script https://github.com/robertomoir/remove-sccm cleanly removes all traces of the SCCM client, which resets the MDM authority. Maybe Autopilot has issues with the SCCM remnants and still sees it as an MDM authority for that device?