Change OSD Task Sequence Error Message Timeout Setting for Configuration Manager

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

You may have noticed that if you get an error when deploying an image using OSD in Configuration Manager the machine will display that error for 15 minutes and then reboot the machine.
If you are running an image at lunch break or even overnight, this is obviously not even time to get the log file and scan through it using CMTrace.exe to find out why the error occurred.
But, thankfully, there is a way of changing the length of time that the error message is displayed…
All you need to do is to go to the very beginning of your task sequence and add a ‘Set Task Sequence Variable’ step as the first step before the task sequence does anything else. Then add the following information into that step:

Name – Set Error Timeout to 24 Hours

Task Sequence Variable – SMSTSErrorDialogTimeout
Value – 86400

You should then end up with a step like this:

The value of 86400 is equal to 24 hours – if you Google it you can change this value to anything you want but 24 hours should give you more than enough time to evaluate any errors within your OSD log files.