sysprep breaks my VM8 machine

[chazzy2501]

Damn, after a week of blaming WDS for my woes it turns out it's the bleedin' VMware. I'm using my ESXi 5.0.0 update 1 and using a VM8 machine. I built a Windows 7 64bit PC. (ace as I can use snapshots etc.) I deliberately did NOT install the VMware drivers as I wanted the image clean.

 

Anyhow it turns out that sysprep kills the image. After a reboot the PC then BSOD's so bad I can't get back into windows to even look at the minidump. I can't read the bsod as it flies past so quick....

 

Anyone run into this? Ideas?

 

NO DO NOT MENTION MDT! (I looking now but it's involved and I've invested loads of time to this:)