Occasionally, there will be problems that occur before Windows is fully installed, updated or during configuration of Roles/Features. Generally speaking, getting the entire \Panther directory wherever it is available will be helpful. That directory (and other log files) changes location during the install, so be sure to get the files from the correct location. Those are detailed below:

SETUP:
During installation, Shift-F10 will get you a command prompt. Plug and Play should be working, so you can copy any log files to a USB drive.

During the install, if the error happens:

1) Before local disk selection, look in:
%Windir%\Panther (specifically, \UnattendGC\Setupact.log, but it’s better to just get the entire \Panther directory). Before a local disk is selected, %Windir% will almost always be on X: drive. This is on the RAM disk created by WinPE.

2) Before the first reboot, get (from the hard drive you are installing to):
$windows.~bt\sources\panther\*.*

3) After the reboot, get:
%Windir%\Panther\*.* (at this point, %Windir% is usually C:.)



Installing hotfixes, features or Windows updates:

cbs.log and (possibly) cbs.persist.log. These are limited to 50 Mb in size and are in:
%Windir%\logs\CBS

An additional log for Windows updates is:
%Windir%\windowsupdate.log

Two additional servicing logs are available in %windir%\winsxs\
Poqexec.log and pending.xml.bad