Hey Brian, once again it's an awesome article! You're the reference for several other websites. Great job!!!

I've one question only. For those like me that want to prepare a base VM OS image for tests purposes. How can I sysprep a Win2K8-R2 image that already was activated without loose the activation? I mean, when I use the generalize option, it's cleanup and I need to activate it once again. In the other hand, if I don't use it the SID won't change as well as several sysprep configs won't be applied.

Thank you.

Howdy, you're fast to answer... LOL

But I can be faster too. ;-)

Just found how to figure it out.

Remove Computer-Specific Information from Your System (Generalize) technet.microsoft.com/.../dd799233%28WS.1

"If you anticipate needing to generalize the computer more than a few times, you can specify that the Windows Software Licensing Rearm program be skipped:

1. Set the Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP\SkipRearm unattend setting value to 1. This specifies that the computer will not be rearmed, and it will not be restored to its original, out-of-box state. All activation-related licensing and registry data will remain and will not be reset. Similarly, any grace-period timers will not be reset."

I have tried it in my VMware environment and it works great. Just add the "Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP" to "3 - Generalize" at AIK and set the "SkipRearm" to 1.

I hope that it help somebody else that needs that like me. Very useful for lab class training environments.

See ya and thanks once again.

I see that you put some configurations in the specialize pass, but in the command only the /oobe and /generalize triggers are set. When do the specialize settings run?

Why not just use C:\Windows\System32\sysprep????

I just need to sysprep a base isntall of the OS to spin up a virtual environment. I don't need to worry about the complexity and hassel of all those default settings. The link about not having to re-activate is very useful thought, saving that tidbit off.

I'm planning on trying this out soon, but I had a question regarding sysprep in general...

On a Windows 7 box I have, I run it through the command prompt with generalize. After it is entered, the GUI form of Sysprep pops up. I choose audit mode, generalize, and then for it to restart. The PC goes through sysprep, restarts, and then, up on bootup, auto logs into the default admin account (which I don't use) and re-displays the sysprep GUI. It happens, from then on, everytime I start up WIndows. Anything I can do or am I doing something wrong?

I am trying to create a image of windows 2008 r2 on a virtual machine, but apparently i am getting this error

Windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file for pass[specialize]. The settings specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup].

I followed the article and used the simlar settings with my company relevant values.

It was the computer name which was giving the problem. I was using the wild character * so that it generates computer name but for some reason that was not working, once i used simple computer name like win2k it worked. Now i am trying to find what wild character we should use to generate automatic name in the format we want

Up to Win2K3 you cold edit the sysprep.inf file after with a new name, domain info, IP, etc then have the system boot without touching it.

In Win2K8 it seems it uses the unattend file as you sysprep and editing the file before you boot back up doesn't work.

Or am I missing a new step?

I have about 40 Lenovo All-in-one computers. They are preinstalled with Win7 Pro. All I want to do is to adjust a default profile so I can image what I already have. Is this no longer the case?

I have 30 windows 7 pro machines. Dell Optiplex 380's.

In XP I just ran sysprep to join the domain, give the computer a random name, pass the key code and run a script at the end to setup security for domain users on this computer. Very easy.

This sysprep for windows 7 is not that simple for me. Basically I setup the first computer just like I want it. It is on the domain, all my applications are loaded and ready to go. I use ghost 11 to ghost the machine.

I need an answer file to just sysprep the machine, then I would ghost it to my network. I would then run ghost on my new identical pc to restore the image. Then boot that machine and it runs through everything for me. Only thing i had to do in XP is log in as the domain administrator once it finished its unattended bootup. Once I logged in as administrator, it would run the one time script to add domain groups to the security groups of this machine.

I need help with answer file and with command for sysprep. I have read many documents and they all seem to have much more then I need. Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

I am new at most of this.

Hi Under WAIK the components are shown up as 'amd...' Will it also work for Intel based machines?

Thanks

Tirou: amd64 refers to the x86-64 achitecture and as such includes any Intel x64 processor. If your Intel machines have 64 bit processors, then it will work.

A great article on prepare an image for cloning. But what about configuring clones?

Here is my use case:

I have created a master image, and sysprep'ed it as described in this article for cloning. When I creating a clone in an attended set up, I want it to come up with a new identity: name, user accounts,, domain membership etc. So I generate a new sysprep.xml file for it, specifying all the infor needed for its new identify. Now my question is where do I save this new sysprep.xml so that it can be used to configure the clone? Obviously, I can't copy it into C: drive !

Thanks

This is what i don't understand. why can't i just use sysprep by itself?

all i need is a base image, with a modified bitmap bacground, and modified local administrator and guest account, and several other taskbar setting, which i lose after completing sysprep with generaize option.

Hi, I used sysprep on win w2k8 R2 , after the reboot Iget :

Autochk program not found. Skipping autocheck.

And my server keeps rebooting

Any idea ?

Found this to be very helpful in creating the syspreped image for Ghosting. Thus have had success with doing such, however I found that using full path names to C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\Sysprep.exe /shutdown /oobe /generalize /unattend:"C:\Windows\system32\sysprep\yourfile.xml"

This seems to be the secret for a lot of the issues that I have seen being talked about in the forums.

Thanks Brian for the good how-to...

Mike

Maybe that's what I'm missing. Thanks Mike! I'll give this a shot.

Carl.

Maybe that's what I'm missing. Thanks Mike! I'll give this a shot.

Carl.

That was it "the magic sauce!" It fixed my issues. You da man!

Thanks.

Carl.

Downloaded iso for AIK for Win7/2008 R2, burned DVD and installed AIK on a Server 2008 R2 instance. Try to create catalog from C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\amd64 and it throws error 0xc1420127.

There is no install.wim on the DVD to copy to the hard drive, nor is there a sources folder on the DVD.

I built my autounattend.xml with WSIM and copied it at the root of a UFD. In the answer file, I tell the setup to create a partition 1 on disk 0 and to accept the EULA. The language settings in the WINPE pass works but it seems to ignore the disk configuration part. Any help will be really appreciated.

Thanks

Sam

I've read through your document, and followed your steps on my Windows Server 2008 R2 64bit, and have tried many times to get this to work on my VM I have created.

I started of with lots of changes that would be done during sysprep and that didn't work, so I've narrowed it down to just providing the product key in "WindowsPE" section, and setting the administrators password in "OOBE" section. Still no joy.

What seems to happen is that it says it installs all the drivers, then it states it is starting the PC for the first time. After this, it says it needs to restart the pc. It shuts down the vm pc, and I have to turn it back on again. When it boots back up it says again that it is starting the PC for the first time, then needs to restart the pc and turns the VM off again. I cannot get it out of this cycle. Anyone else had this problem and how did you solve it?

Note: This post discusses Sysprep as it pertains to Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. If you’re working with a newer version of Windows, check out these posts: Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

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