How many sysprep's?

Hi. I need a quick answer to a quick question.
How many times can Windows 7 be sysprepped before it stops letting me?

Situation I'm now in:
I have 13 images for 7 departments to build in two weeks on two machines.

My process is to build a generic base image on one, sysprep it, up it to the network share as a 'Gold'.
Then I can bring that Gold image down onto the other box and work on two images at once.

Each one will need up be upped 'Gold' again to the network, then sysprepped again, then upped back as 'Prep' to be brought down to the classrooms.

I realise I'l need to make a note of which 'gold' is built on which box, so I can easily bring that gold back down to that box and work on it at a later date if needed.

So should two syspreps be fine? What is the limit?

Yes, I've got MDT2010 on one of my severs.
However, we wont be using it as our deployment solution...

logicearth said:

xarden said:

Hi. I need a quick answer to a quick question.
How many times can Windows 7 be sysprepped before it stops letting me?.....So should two syspreps be fine? What is the limit?

There is no limit.

That should make it easier for me then...

There is an actual limit to how many times you can run sysprep on an image, and it's 3 times.

That is true, although that can make going back and fixing images later problematic. I still agree with you on the MDT route though - there's no need to capture a "gold" image when you can use the MDT lab to rebuild from original media, and then modify and capture that back with a new task sequence.

How often will someone need to sysprep, really? Just make one good image and then use SCCM to push out software.

Thanks for your replies guys.
MS SCCM/MDT vs Novell Zen: The deciders have decided on Zen10. I'd prefer SCCM myself, but we have a Zen Master here who knows a bit more about them both than I do.

We have about 13 images. So I really dont want to push Adobe CS5, Visual Studio 2010, Solidworks 2010, Steam + games + SDK's, Autodesk Suite (just to name a few) to more than half of those images.

After having a look at some new processes yesterday, it appears I may have to sysprep about 3-4 times.
That should last my building process near the start of 2011 semester and any fixes/patches/new software will have to be pushed out.

Edit: Another thing, while sysprep is running and reboots first time, if I fail to capture the image before windows starts, that gold image has become useless and will need to be either sysprep'd again, or rebuilt. I'd prefer the former.

+1 more for this one.
Part of our new process to capture images is PXEboot... and my bios wasn't configged for that.

Must be friday...
Must be time for a coffee...