Windows 7: Issue with WDS capture of Sysprepped customised Win7 image

Good morning folks, hoping someone can help me out with this rather frustrating issue.
I am currently working on rolling out Windows 7 X86 enterprise to our company and have created the reference image VM, tweaked my Answer file and sysprep setup to just how i want it.
I have also setup a WDS server (again its a VM), i have then continued and captured the WIM image of the reference VM.
All was going great untill i tried to deploy the resulting WIM via WDS onto another VM. It deployed fine but once booted the machine was not setup the same as the reference VM, background wasnt set, start menu was not setup as per the reference VM, was prompted for a machine name which i had set it not to do via the answer file. I tried deploying the WIM using WINPE and Imagex onto a real PC but the setup sticks during one of the sysprep passes ("Starting Services" is whats on the screen)

Thinking that my sysprep or answerfile must be to blame i started up the reference VM and let it run through sysprep. It ran correctly and the desktop etc was as it should be. So the issue lies somewhere between VM, WDS and Sysprep.

Where have i gone wrong? I'm thinking it must be the anwer file or a sysprep setting but i am at a loss.

Many thanks in advance for any help