SCCM - Where to put the create user step

Solution 1:

For reference the local admin account can be enabled during the TS as well, see the screenshot below:

Now, for your command: I suspect that the command can only be run under the Full OS (as opposed to WinPE. I noticed in your screenshot you don't restart into the Full OS at all. Any SCCM packages (this includes command line commands that act on the Full OS) will have to be installed after the SCCM client, and after the client is installed it will boot into the Full OS and continue the task sequence. This would of course be confirmed by your smsts.log file at the point of failure, but I'm fairly certain that's at least part of the problem.

What it appears you're doing now is adding the account to WinPE, and not to Windows. Bringing up an F8 Prompt during a TS and typing net user walkie /add for me gives the following:

The user or group account specified cannot be found.

The user was successfully created but could not be added to the USERS local group.

More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 3774.

Now, that account was created, but I'm betting the command didn't return a 0 exit code, which is what SCCM thrives on (among another one that escapes me at the moment, which means success but reboot required). Any others not explicitly defined as success on the options tab of that step will error and cause the task sequence to stop, unless you define that step or group to continue on error.

Solution 2:

So I've had the chance to deliberate this issue with a collegue of mine.
We both came to the same conclusion as the answer of @BigHomie.
The user couldn't be added as all steps in the Install Operating System group are executed in WinPE.

I thought it would work, because you can enable/disable the default admin, but apparently that is done by some hook in the setup.

We moved the creation of the user to the end of the TS, after setting up the SCCM client and after restoring the user data.

Thank you all for your help. I really appreciate how fast you reacted, even though StackOverflow was down this morning.

PS: I also got the keyboard working. SCCM is finally taking my Unattend.xml :)