Group policy issues after imaging

[Hacksawbob]

I am having a hell of a time trying to eliminate a group policy failure after image deployment.

 

Built machine win7 64 bit and installed software.

cloned with clonezilla and deployed to the other machines (no sysprep)

added to domain and activated all seemed to be OK apart from the lack of printers being deployed so I did a gpresult and received

 

Group Policy Infrastructure failed due to the error listed below.

 

Access is denied.

 

Note: Due to the GP Core failure, none of the other Group Policy components processed their policy. Consequently, status information for the other components is not available.

 

Additional information may have been logged. Review the Policy Events tab in the console or the application event log for events between 13/06/2013 13:20:25 and 13/06/2013 13:20:28.

 

Also i noticed that the computer name at the top of the gpresult HTML file was the name of the machine that was imaged not the new machine name.

 

errors in Event viewer:

Error: Failed to register for connectivity notification. Error code 0x4CE.

Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy/Operational

Source: Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy

Date: 13/06/2013 13:41:42

Event ID: 7320

 

 

 

So I put this down to some SID clone issue and ran sysprep with oobe and generalise options. Removed the machine name from AD. Rebooted and added back to domain then activated windows. I compared the machines SID with PSgetsid before and after sysprep to confirm the SID had changed.

 

 

I still get this access denied error in gpresult and the machine name STILL shows the master image machine name at the top of gpresult .

 

End of tether reached! Oddly the machines work quite well despite this issue and apart from the printers not being deployed you wouldn't know about it! But I really need to resolve this as I'm sure it will cause problems at some point in the future.

 

Please anything further i could try to resolve this?

[Michael]

The machine name and SID are two different things. This is why Sysprep is useful - you can reset both during the initial setup process. Even if all the SIDs are different, you can't have all the machine names the same in a domain.

[Hacksawbob]

Hi Michael. Thanks for that. I have changed the machine name during the setup and the SID is reset by syprep generalise. Any ideas why I have a lingering machine name in the GPresult?