Sysprep does not work. hours of installing, ends with error

wkw427 · 28 Jun 2012

We have five Dell precision t7400s. Three of them in use, one is a spare, the fifth is off site, and needs to be put to use.

I took an image of one of the PCs that was in use, imaged it on to the spare 7400, and it worked fine. I then did a sysprep, oobe, and generalization. I then took an image.

I put the syspreped image on the off site PC, and it has been taking several hours to get through the "setup is installing devices".. when it finishes, it encounters an error with the unattended xml... and I'm stuck with a fudged windows install.

Does anyone have an idea what is going on here?

Victor S · 28 Jun 2012

Not sure exactly what is happening there, but I and others ran across an issue where booting the machine with the sysprepped image stalls during configuration.
The solution that has worked for me and some others is:
1. reboot into safe mode and run until that stalls.
2. reboot into normal mode.

Hopefully that will lead to a successful configuration.
Might work for you.

emaraszek · 28 Jun 2012

Two recommendations for you:

1. Use mysysprep (http://www.tsaysoft.com/mysysprep2/) As you can see from the site, it supports many more features than the MS version. I have used it for years without a hitch.

2. If you insist on using the MS version, store your sysprep answer file in "C:\Windows\Panther". Overwrite the one that's in there if there is one and be sure to name it "unattend.xml". Then point sysprep to that. I had an issue with my answer file not being found when sysprepping a VM from Virtual PC and this resolved the issue.

If possible, upload a copy of your unattend and I can look through it for you, please remove any sensitive data (i.e. passwords) before uploading. Also, please provide more insight into your image; is it of a physical machine or VM? what software is on the image? etc.

Also, if these machines will be joined to a domain I wouldn't try re-imaging without a sysprep. I have experimented with that in the past on identical hardware and it has lead to instability and licensing issues that could only be solved with a fresh installation. My advice is to spare yourself that headache.

I look forward to helping!

wkw427 · 28 Jun 2012

I can only use approved software for this, and sysprep is needed in case we need to substitute a crashed PC with something that is not a 7400

Anyway, found the problem. windows media network service uses the same dll as sysprep, so I just had to stop the service and make a new generalized oobe... strange but it works now.

Thanks

Victor S · 28 Jun 2012

wkw427 said:

I can only use approved software for this, and sysprep is needed in case we need to substitute a crashed PC with something that is not a 7400

Anyway, found the problem. windows media network service uses the same dll as sysprep, so I just had to stop the service and make a new generalized oobe... strange but it works now.

Thanks

OOBE errored when I didn't have that service stopped.

emaraszek · 28 Jun 2012

I'm telling you guys, mysysprep is the way to go

gregrocker · 28 Jun 2012

That WMP Service is a known issue even in our consumer tutorial: SysPrep to move HD to another computer.

I have tested all above mentioned methods with all versions of Windows 7, from Starter to Enterprise. It works every time, with one exception: for reasons unknown to me, sysprep seems sometimes dislike Windows Media Player networking service, which is by default started every time Windows 7 starts. In about every third time I've done this, I've got an error message when trying to generalize:

However, this is not a big problem. You just need to stop the WMP networking service, and run sysprep with generalize option again. You can stop the service in question by typing net stop WMPNetworkSvc to command prompt, and hitting Enter: