Troubleshooting Autopilot Error 0x801C03ED

During some recent self-deploying Autopilot testing, I ran into an error with “device preparation” so I thought I’d share the simple resolution in case anyone runs into the same issue. From the event log under Applications/Microsoft/Windows/ProvisioningDiagnostics/AutoPilot, the exact error you might have seen is:

AutoPilotManager device enrollment failed during stage AADEnroll with error 0x801C03ED
AutoPilotManager failed during device enrollment phase AADEnroll.  HRESULT = 0x801C03ED

To fix this, try deleting and reuploading the hardware hash from Intune.

The reason this happens is because the hardware hash is missing an associated Azure AD object (remember that when you upload a hardware hash to Intune, an Azure AD object is created). You may have previously accidentally deleted the device object from Azure AD, if for example it was used for testing or a user-driven Autopilot that was reset. Without this record we get the 0x801C03ED error. The record updates to reflect the computer name after the device is provisioned, so be sure not to delete it.