Windows 7: Windows 7 hung on setup is starting services

this is what i have done so far. got a win 7 dell pc, a vostro 400 to be precise. installed all apps and settings that we need on our desktops. then i used sysprep to run the OOBE and generalize switch, then booted into windows PE to capture an image .wim file of the entire isntallation. this .wim file is then saved onto a 16gb usb memory stick becuase its quite large, then using imagex i apply the image to the same pc same hardware etc and it completes with no errors. then the next time i restart i should be at the OOBE with the language settings etc etc but its just stuck on this dam "setup is starting services" rubbish!!! anyone had this problem or done any win 7 imaging yet? floppy drive is disabled, no usb devices plugged in apart from a keyboard. so im lost now, any help appreciated.

Hi there, its not necessary that these methods will work 100%.
I would recommend a clean install with a windows 7 DVD.

is this for a work environment. I have not used this... What is Windows PE?

i wont accept that it wont work becuase i know it does. yes this is at work, only a small number of pc's and cannot deploy over the network. windows PE i think stands for preinstallation environment, its like a command prompt and you can capture images and apply images and all sorts of things. im new to it myself.

yeah I didn't think you would be doing this at home. Did you read through the link I posted. that's straight from MS and has good info.

Have you tried multiple times? maybe the image you extracted was corrupted.

Sometimes CD ISO's will do most of the stuff, but fail in the end cause of some unseen corruption in the ISO.... I don't know if the same could be happening with your flashdrive image or not.

If its an ISO put onto a bootable USB, then maybe try re-burning the image at a lower speed (or in this case a different program)

yeah i was thinking maybe start again from the begining, and re-captrue the image and try to apply it again. the file is not an ISO its a .wim which iv never heard of before doing this, with imagex you can also split this file into several .swm files if its to large for a dvd, thats why i bought a 16gb usb stick to stick it on. Also i did use a "compress" option whilst performing the capture, so maybe this could have corrupted somthing.