SCCM Task Sequence Restart: Restarting the Wizard in WinPE

Restarting a Stuck Task Sequence in WinPE Without a Full Reboot

If a Configuration Manager task sequence hangs or errors out partway through while the machine is still in WinPE, rebooting the whole machine to try again is usually your safest and most reliable option — but it’s slower than it needs to be if you’re actively debugging a task sequence and expect to hit the same point again.

If F8 support is enabled on your boot image (Properties > Customization tab in the Configuration Manager console), you can press F8 while in WinPE to bring up a command prompt without leaving the WinPE environment. From there you can inspect X:\Windows\Temp\SMSTSLog\smsts.log to see exactly where and why the task sequence failed, which is usually far more useful for diagnosing the actual problem than simply restarting it blind.

Whether you can cleanly restart the task sequence engine itself from that prompt without a full reboot depends on exactly where it failed and your boot image version, so treat the command prompt primarily as a diagnostic tool — reviewing the log, checking network/driver state, and confirming content is reachable — rather than assuming there’s always a safe in-place restart. In most real-world troubleshooting, the fastest reliable path is: diagnose from the F8 prompt, fix the underlying cause (a missing driver, a content or boundary issue, disk configuration), then let the task sequence restart from a clean reboot.

Resources