I had this happen to clients of mine when I experienced a CAP problem with a child site server. The CAP share was not created. I eventually ended up removing the CAP, editing the registry and recreating CAP.

The same problem has also been seen in the form of a corrupt copy of Clicore.exe in the SMSlogon directory. PCs that get client installed via Remote Installation go in fine, but those that get installed via logon Installation or a manual run of smsman.exe (called from SMSlogon) fail, and a giant .tmp file is the result (as large as 2 GB). I was getting Event ID 2013 in the System Log, showing the C: drive almost out of space. By replacing Clicore.exe with a 'clean' version in the main SMSLogon site, and then deleting thebad from all other sites, the new file replicated out successfully. This solution worked at another location last year, so I've go my fingers crossed that it will work here.