MDT 2010 New Feature #3: Suspend and resume a Lite Touch task sequence

MDT 2010 includes a new script called LTISuspend.wsf that isn’t actually part of any of the task sequence templates – by default it’s not used.  But if you add it into a task sequence during the “State Restore” phase activities, it will allow you to temporarily suspend the task sequence.  This is intended for reference image creation processes where there might be some activities that you just can’t possibly automate – you can make the changes by hand and then when finished restart the task sequence to create your image.  (If there is any way to do the automation, you should – this is for those “I have no other choice” situations.)

To use this new script, add a step into the task sequence with the following command line:

cscript.exe %SCRIPTROOT%\LTISuspend.wsf

When this step runs, you’ll see a popup dialog on the screen:

image

There will be a “Resume Task Sequence” shortcut on the desktop that should be used to eventually restart the task sequence from the next step after the suspend step.  You can do anything you want while the task sequence is suspended, including rebooting, but when you are done you should make sure that you are logged in as the local Administrator account again, and that UAC is still disabled for the local Administrator account.

This same capability is used by MDT 2010 in other ways – more on those later.