After Sysprep windows could not finish configuring the system

Hi all. I'm making an image for work. I've already successfully made 2 images with no problems, but this image has failed twice now, and I have not found a solution to this issue.

I'm using Win7 Pro 32bit and making an image that basically has extra software:
ESET
Visual Studio
ArcGIS (school software)
MS Office

After running sysprep on this image, I get to the point where "windows is starting services" and get an error dialogue box: "windows was unable to finish configuring the system.....restart....blah blah."

I looked at the Setuperr and setupact logs and there are no errors.

I look at setup.etl file and output the file to a CSV. I find several statements like this:
"Unable to process reg key for REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ESET"

Of course, it isn't telling my any more detail than that.

All the reg errors are from ESET, my antivirus, but i don't know why it's unable to process this reg key. Secondly, I HAVE ESET ON ALL MY WORKING IMAGES! I don't think ESET is the problem because i've got 2 images with ESET on it already, and I installed it in the same way on this image.

There are 2 microsoft websites (I'm sorry I don't have the links) that state different things about this error. One says that this happens if registry keys are over 8Kb in size, and they have a hotfix. The other site says something else (again i forget what) and has another hotfix. I've tried to apply each hotfix by using DISM without results.

What is this stupid generic error, and what's the best way to find out what's going wrong? I have build an image twice now (over 40hours for each build) and I can't afford to keep losing time! Someone knowledgable, please help!

Thanks,

Kevin

I just recently build an image for a lab of computers, and whenever I included ArcGIS in the image, when I would deploy the image it would fail. It would be configuring the computer and simply fail. If I leave ArcGIS out, it works fine. I never found a solution to this, but you may have to find some other way to deploy ArcGIS.

Thank you for the reply. Just knowing that someone else has this issue makes me feel much better. For the time being i'll leave the ArcGIS install out, but I'm determined to find a solution!

Knschroe

We have the same problem as well and unable to find a solution. We have been dealing with ESRI for the past couple weeks concerning this issue and they haven't come up with any kind of valid assistance either. Of course they tell us that they were able to make it work in their lab on the same configuration as i'm using, so to fix the issue, they tell me that i must uninstall some software because the registry is too big... Does that sound familiar???

Yes, that's very familiar. I found this post:

Resolution -

1) If you are receiving the "Low Registry Space" error, set the Registry Size Limit to "unlimited":

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control
Key: RegistrySizeLimit
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0xffffff (4294967295)


2) Reboot

3) As a Administrator open a Command Prompt and run "SFC /SCANNOW". The command should complete successfully and if any errors were found, they should be corrected.

This was posted on the ESRI forums, from someone who noticed that Visual Studio 2008 was related to the error. Personally I'm not sure if it was VS, or just installing the .net framework. Here's the link for more chatter on the topic... http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=93&f=1148&t=287391




But for me, it doesn't fix the issue. I found 2 windows hotfixes that claim to do the same thing, but they also didn't work. So far no solution except to reload without ArcGis.

Done that too!!! I've tried just about everything i found on the various forums but no change.

Basically i create the image without ArcGIS and run SYSPREP. Copy the image to another pc to test and it works fine. From that same image, i install ArcGIS, no errors reported in any way, run the program and it works fine. From here i run SYSPREP again performing the registry and the SRC things, but once copied to another pc, i get the following message on boot up:

"Windows could not finish configuring the system. To attempt to resume configuration, restart the computer"

On restart, it gives me the same message. Tried to repair from the Windows 7 Enterprise CD but makes no difference.

I've also did some digging up in the Event Logs to try to figure out the what/when/where things went wrong and noticed that this "Registry running out of resources" message popped up and it was right after the installation of MS Office 2007 after i installed Windows. So i'm loading Windows 7, MS Office 2007 and i will try SYSPREP again. If everything is ok, i will install ArcGIS again and run SYSPREP again to see if there is a difference.

Just to let you know, i run SYSPREP with the following option: SYSPREP /generalize /oobe /shutdown

I can give more details if needed but i gotta figure this one out...

Thanks

jbergeron,

That is EXACTLY what I tried! Ha, It's good to know you're not alone. I'm going to get this running, but it's the 'busy it season' here at work, so i'll have to keep it off the image for now.

The other thing i'm thinking about is to use AutoIT to make an autoinstaller script that i can run on each pc. I haven't look into this though. That would elminate the need for installing this on the image, although I ultimately want to get it installed on an image.

We can keep working on this, and i'm sure we'll eventually get something to work. Just might take some time is all.

ccatlett1984

Never used that program and don't really have time to figure it out. I work in a University and must prepare these images for the coming academic year. But i will keep that in mind for sure...

Other then that, i spent the better part of the day yesterday going through Event logs and noticed one thing. The "Registry size limit" was reached right after i installed MS Office 2007 which is the first piece of software i installed after Windows 7 and it's updates. That don't make sense...

So i decided to do some more testing. I formatted a PC with DiskPart and re-installed Windows 7 Enterprise (32bit) from the CD, performed updates, made the registry size limit change, and then installed MS Office again. Did the SFC /Scannow and then ran Sysprep. Copied that to a second PC as a test and the image was a success...

So took that same image, and installed ArcGIS 9.3 and did the update to 9.3.1. SFC /Scannow and Sysprep. Once done, the image seemed to be ok. Verified all Event logs, all good, tested ArcGIS (just in case) and it too worked. Registry size limit seemed to have fixed another issue with Windows updates as well.

So the moral of the story is that if you're like me, you have to redo all images from scratch. Don't forget to make the registry size limit change, and install ArcGIS right from the beginning...