Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer

Hi Muffinator, welcome to the Seven Forums.

Rebooting when? While sysprepping or when booting the new setup?

Paul RJ said:

Thanks kari. I was afraid this would be the case. But I did have some luck as it were. I continued searching on other blogs and found this:

The problem seems to be the registy entries made by sysprep, which probably should have, but didnt, change at the first reboot.

To confirm, after a clean image capture with WDS and install, upon the first reboot the system will not go past the message:

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

THE SOLUTION THAT WORKED

1. When the error message appears, open up a command window with SHIFT + F11
2. open the REGEDIT
3. navigate to hklm\system\setup
4. change CmdLine to blank (no value entered) (was oobe\windeploy.exe)
5. change CreateNewQueueOnFirstBoot to 0 (was 1)
6. change OOBEInProgress to 0 (was 1) (i am guessing that might be AUDITInProgress if that was your sysprep choice)
7. change SetupPhase to 0 (was 4)
8. change SetupShutdownRequired to 0 (was 1)
9. change SetupType to 0 (was 2)
10. change SystemSetupInProgress to 0 (was1)

11. exit REGEDIT and reboot

It Worked!!!! You can't believe how relieved I was and it went right to my home home screen with all my icons and background intact but at a low screen resolution. I couldn't believe it at first because I put about 7 or 8 hours into it with most of that being trying to find a solution.

I only want to point out one observation with the above process and that is item number 5 did not exist in my hklm\system\setup folder so I revised the rest and voilà!!

I post this solution that may work for some others here and considering it only took about 10 minutes to make the changes, it is certainly worth the try if you're still stuck.

Thanks again Kari. Your tip sheet saved me massive amounts of heart ache.

Regards,
Paul

Well I was stuck in a reboot loop and safe mode told me I had to restart. I ran Paragon on auto, but i was right back in the reboot loop after restarting.

This was the only thing that worked. Thanks!!!!!

I had to use Shift+F10, and I did not have either 5 or 8 as an option.

After this method, I went straight to the login screen! Still had to update the drivers from the motherboard disc, but ran into no further isues.

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I was transferring a Windows 7 x64 install that had been upgraded from Vista x64. The original CPU was the q6600, the new system is a Z87 board with a haswell chip and UEFI BIOS. My OS drive was a single drive, but I also had an Intel RST RAID setup for the other 2 drives on the system. I had IE10 and had to disable the WMC network service.

So pretty much everything that could possible cause a problem was there. There was enough info in this thread to get through all of the issues.

A misunderstanding perhaps? See Method One, Step 2 again:

2. Run Command Prompt as administrator

You must run the cmd as administrator, meaning it should be in C:\Windows\System32 folder when you start it. Simply right click the Command Prompt in Start Menu and select Run as administrator from context menu.

Kari

Have you booted to Audit Mode before running sysprep, or are you doing sysprep when booted normally to Windows? Do you get any error messages other than fatal error, and if any what are they?

How was your Windows 7 installed (clean install or upgrade), have you done a so called repair install to your current Windows setup?

OEM or retail windows, where and how have you got it?

Jeff1 said:

Hi Kari me again, I dropped you a line this morning. I am going through the instructions to replace a mobo. I did the net stop WMPNetworkSvc and it showed that it stopped working. Then I proceeded to the next step, got the System Prep tool window, put in the info as noted, it starts running and I still get a fatal error message. Any thoughts as to why? I was hoping to avoid reloading the entire OS. I do have a system image with everything backed up. Would it be easier/alternative to swap out the mobo, do a system image restore then update the drivers for the new mobo. Thanks - Jeff

IE10 Users: Please read this article first: Sysprep Fatal Error With IE 10 (FIX) | System Administration

I do have a system image with everything backed up. Would it be easier/alternative to swap out the mobo, do a system image restore then update the drivers for the new mobo

Indeed you can try that. Attach the external drive with backup to usb2.0 port!

If system not booting at all afterwards (most likely stop 0x7B) ... Make Windows 7 bootable after motherboard swap