Unable to finish setup with Network Join enabled

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duufy

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I'm an IT Support tech currently testing out NTLite to see if we can use it for our company. I only have the trial version, trying to justify purchasing a license.

Now onto the issue. When I have Domain/Network Join enabled, it gets stuck loading Windows Setup with a spinning wheel and "Just a moment" underneath. I've left it overnight and it does not move forward. Even weirder, the computer shows up in our domain despite never fully finishing.

When I disable it, the computer goes through all the setup and app installs that it is supposed to do. I've looked through many posts on here and all settings seem to be correct.

The biggest question I have: is the network join feature only able to work with a licensed version of NTLite? I hope this isn't the case, but I just want to make sure before moving forward.
 
Domain join is enabled from Unattended mode, which is available to unlicensed editions.

All that NTLite does for this step is include your join credentials in the autounattend.xml, and it's presumed none of the Active Directory components have been removed.

When an install stalls for several hours (or indefinitely), it's normally caused by a Post-Setup command that never exits. In the case of AD, it might be running one of your domain scripts.

For troubleshooting, I would power off the stuck PC and reboot from a clean ISO (without the unattended file). Stop when you reach the first Setup screen, and open a CMD window with Shift-F10. Now browse the system drive's \Windows\Panther folder and copy the log files. If there isn't an obvious error reported from setuperr.log, then scroll backwards from setupact.log to get a clue on what went wrong.
 
garlin said:
For troubleshooting, I would power off the stuck PC and reboot from a clean ISO (without the unattended file).
Click to expand...
Just to clarify, what do you mean by a clean ISO without the unattended file?

I tried a default Windows 10 ISO and was unable to find the \Windows\Panther folder, so I'm definitely missing something.
 
On the install PC, Windows logs its progress on the system drive's \Windows\Panther folders. If you abort the install, and reboot from an ISO (or USB media) that doesn't have an unattended file; you can open a CMD shell from WinPE and read those files. With the unattended file still in place on the boot media, WinPE won't allow you to pause and escape to CMD.

You can't boot into the halfway installed PC (most of the time), so you need a way to access the log files by booting off another device.

Obviously you need to search for which drive letter the system is mounted under.
 
Thank you for your help! I was able to find the errors and remediate /almost/ everything. The only error that I have left is this:

IBSLIB Neither <InstallToAvailablePartition> nor <InstallTo> specified for an <OSImage>
Click to expand...

As far as I can tell, there are no Unattended settings that I can change for this other than using the Configure Disk option in the Toolbar (a premium feature that I cannot use without a license). Do I have any other options for this setting?
 
You can copy/paste the XML block from another autounattend.xml file, if you don't have a licensed edition.

Unfortunately, this forum software doesn't like posting XML code so you'll have to check out this text file version.
 

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