Sysprep nearly working but drivers going?

[reggiep]

Hi All,
I have been struggling for over a week trying to sysprep a windows 7 machine. Where it seemed so simple on XP it seems a never ending job on 7.
I thought I had cracked it as I managed to get a sysprep to run and the machine came back on without any errors BUT the graphics driver disappears.
I had a quick read about PersistAllDevices so added that to my answer file, with true, but I had an error when sysprepping then.
Can anyone suggest what command would be best when running sysprep so that drivers do not disappear?

At the moment i currently run...

sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:c:\windows\system32\sysprep\unattend.xml

All I want is an image that will go on 70 netbooks that are all identical, can I get rid of the generalize?

Thanks

[SYNACK]

Getting rid of the generalize is not a good idea as then the Windows Update and Machine UIDs remain the same, this does not affect their ability to all co-exist and join AD but will cause issues with WSUS not seeing all the laptops at once and also it shows up as a single computer under KMS so that can mess with your activation count and prevent activations.

You can reset a small chunk of this by using slmgr -rearm on them afterwards but this only mitigates some of the issues. There may be other issues that I am unaware of but those are the main ones that will bite immediatly.

Not sure about the command to do it propperly as all of our images now just run off MDT so all drivers needed are injected during the imageing which takes a little longer but negates the need for the non-driver-killing sysprep.

[reggiep]

Thanks for the help there Synack,
My problem is that we don't have Server 2008 R2 at the moment so are relying on our FOG server to pump out images to our clients.
I won't bin /generalize just yet then, I'll keep on looking for ways to keep the drivers.

[BHMS]

According to the 70-680 exam book you need to set the PersistAllDeviceInstalls setting in Microsoft-Windows-PnpSysprep to True in your answer file.

[SYNACK]

I had a quick read about PersistAllDevices so added that to my answer file, with true, but I had an error when sysprepping then.

What was the error you got?

Another way to do this would be to add the required drivers to a folder on the c: of the image and add it as a driver search path in your answer file, this should have the same affect as the MDT version that I use allowing you to do a generalize and also not requireing WDS and MDT.
Add a Device Driver Path to an Answer File

Ycan use MDT on a non server OS to build a Deployment share, the only thing you loose by not having it on a server is PXE network booting and multicast support. It will still generate ISOs that connect to the network and run the deployment in unicast mode. Probably not what you're after but could be useful for making the base images quickly and easily.

[FN-GM]

Hi

I am just wondering what solution worked best for you in the end please?

Thanks

[Gatt]

Not sure about the "PersistAllDevices" - though worth setting it if the following doesn't work (I haven't set it and this works for me!)

Sysprep into Audit Mode with Generalize set
Then, when it reboots into Audit Mode, Sysprep as the OP is trying

BTW, I have found that as long as there is a file called unattend.xml in the sysprep folder yiou dont need to specify an unattend file - it automatically detects it and uses it..

[Tunster]

We use the "PersistAllDevicesInstalls" tag in an XML file. Works wonders when you want a universal curriculum image with multiple drivers from different types and brands of workstation.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State">
    <settings pass="generalize">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-PnpSysprep" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" processorArchitecture="x86">
            <PersistAllDeviceInstalls>true</PersistAllDeviceInstalls>
        </component>
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Security-Licensing-SLC" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <SkipRearm>1</SkipRearm>
        </component>
    </settings>
</unattend>

To make the process easier, I copy a batch file across to run and that picks up the sysprep.xml I saved from the code above. The "SkipRearm" stops the machine resetting the operating systems and counting down 5 rearms limit rule. Our XML code that's applied to the image itself changes the product code if we need to use MAK instead of KMS.

sysprep /quiet /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:sysprep.xml

Hope this helps anyone trying to do this in future. This has worked since the early days of deploying Vista.

[Arthur]

Another way to do this would be to add the required drivers to a folder on the c: of the image and add it as a driver search path in your answer file, this should have the same affect as the MDT version that I use allowing you to do a generalize and also not requireing WDS and MDT.

To elaborate on Synack's suggestion a little further, you can find a complete answer file which does this here.