The software distribution policy was not found (Error 87D02004)

Just when you thought you seen every error message in ConfigMgr, I have some news for you. Today I recognized a new error; never seen it before actually. On a Windows 7 SP1 task sequence, which was running fine, it went wrong on first package after Windows during a new deployment. When looking in the smsts.log the following line was seen: The software distribution policy was not found. (Error: 87D02004). What's that?

Looking on the web I found the following post: Windows Noob
It mentions: I have just changed all the packages to Applications. Another option is to use Run Command Line for the packages.

So I changed all packages (10 of them) to install by Run Command Line and it went fine after all.
When looking in some more logfiles there were some interesting things seen, exactly during the same timestamp):
-ClientIDManagerStartup.log (during the package error, ConfigMgr was still busy with client configuration)
-LocationServices.log (during the package error, ConfigMgr was busy with finding a Management point)
-Execmgr.log (during the package error, ConfigMgr could not find policy in WMI for the specific package)

Trick is you need to put a "Restart computer" step after ConfigMgr client installation, so it has more time to finish configuration and find a Management point. The policy will be find afterwards also. Because we are talking about a Workgroup join here, it's also a good idea to put some extra parameters during the ConfigMgr client installation step. That will be SMSMP=<FQDN> FSP=<FQDN> DNSSUFFIX=<?>

Hope it helps!