Windows 7 sysprep - argh!

[GoldenWonder]

Well thats just great. Spent a week setting up a nice Windows 7 image to dump onto our WDS server so we can deploy it this summer and as soon as I run sysprep I get the 'a fatal error has occured sysprep cannot continue'

 

No my nicely prepared 'donor' pc is useless, cannot login to the domain, cannot logon locally and I'm going to have to start all over.

 

Argh!

[chazzy2501]

Sorry, I'm no deployment expert but I didn't think you had to sysprep a vista (thus Win7 machine) as the operating system is hardware agnostic? All you have to do is send an image to the wds using winpe.

 

I started this last month but got stuck so I'd be interested if you could ouline your process.

[GoldenWonder]

You still have to run the W7 version of sysprep (installed by default) to generalize it before you deploy it

 

You're right though - one image is hardware independant, this image was a generic 'classroom' image

[SYNACK]

I have found the best way to do a true hardware independent image is to do the template in a virtual machine so no dodgey drivers can stuff it up (intel :angry:). You can then just snapshot it before you run sysprep for easy rollback and editing, updating etc later.

 

Remember you only get three syspreps with Vista/7 and yes you need to sysprep with generalize ticked to make it hardware non-specific.

[jkuzo]

Actually that is not true... You can sysprep more than 3 times as long as the product is activated when you sysprep.

[GoldenWonder]

I never did get to the bottom of why sysprep failed, but as it scuppered the whole installation it was better to start from scratch anyway. (It was currently activated at time of sysprep)

[SYNACK]

Actually that is not true... You can sysprep more than 3 times as long as the product is activated when you sysprep.

 

Good catch: How Sysprep Works

 

I have had issues with it not generalizing properly after the third time in testing though, it started to get stuff wrong like using uniprocessor rather than multiprocessor configuration which was not helpful so I prefer to keep it to a single sysprep if possible and VMs make this easy.

[eddyc]

I had this issue last week - you MUST run sysprep as a domain administrator so that the computer account can be removed from the domain.

 

I was gutted last week when this happened to me, three days of tweaking gone...

[SYNACK]

@GoldenWonder - Win 7 - sysprep fails - www.windows-noob.com this post might shed some light on its failing.

 

I have also had issues with sysprepping a domain joined machine, if you have logged in with any domain accounts at all they need to be completely cleared from the users folder and registry before you sysprep otherwise that user will have profile issues when logging in on an imaged machine.

[GoldenWonder]

I saw a few mentions about the wmp* processes but when I checked they weren't running.

 

I was logged in as a domain admin at the time though.

[themightymrp]

Whenever I've run sysprep, the setup machine has always been activated. After imaging I have had to re-activate every single time, it gives me 3 days to do it. Plus, yes you must be logged in as a Domain Administrator to run the sysprep correctly, unless you are installing software via the special 'Audit mode'.

[sted]

my problem is it keeps stripping out intel display drivers randomly (same as vista did) same sysprep file i used previously that diddnt its annoying

[SYNACK]

my problem is it keeps stripping out intel display drivers randomly (same as vista did) same sysprep file i used previously that diddnt its annoying

 

It will do that by default as the intel drivers don't get stored persistently in the driver store so that they survive a sysprep. The easiest way is to integrate them into the driver store of the image after you have captured as is outlined here http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/52300-wds-graphic-drivers.html#post478903

 

When using MDT it is also trivial to add in all the required drivers to your distribution point which will also solve the issue.

 

If all of your systems are hardware identical then you can sysprep without generalizing which will leave the drivers as they are however you loose the ability for an image to be used easily on multiple hardware types.

[sted]

It will do that by default as the intel drivers don't get stored persistently in the driver store so that they survive a sysprep. The easiest way is to integrate them into the driver store of the image after you have captured as is outlined here http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/52300-wds-graphic-drivers.html#post478903

 

When using MDT it is also trivial to add in all the required drivers to your distribution point which will also solve the issue.

 

If all of your systems are hardware identical then you can sysprep without generalizing which will leave the drivers as they are however you loose the ability for an image to be used easily on multiple hardware types.

 

its just annoying that it does it about 50% of the time all or nowt i could cope with (by which i mean if i pull an image in school a it will have intel drivers but same in school b it wont rather than about half the pcs deployed get it)

[jkuzo]

its just annoying that it does it about 50% of the time all or nowt i could cope with (by which i mean if i pull an image in school a it will have intel drivers but same in school b it wont rather than about half the pcs deployed get it)

 

Actually there is a line in the unattend file that you need to add to "Persist all device drivers install". This will solve your intel problem. Activation should happen automatically if your using the recommended KMS solution by microsoft and not trying to authenticate all machines with a MAK key.

[SYNACK]

@Sted - I have had all sorts of issues with intel's drivers on platforms newer than XP, at one point one of their developers even posted about how intel disliked the new driver model and the problems that it caused them. Other manufacturers have managed and intel are getting much better but as yet intel are the only vendor who have managed to produce drivers that have completely broken any of my syspreped images which is one reason why I do all my images on VMs.

 

I think this particular issue is as much to do with the drivers as the OS sysprepping.

[sted]

Actually there is a line in the unattend file that you need to add to "Persist all device drivers install". This will solve your intel problem. Activation should happen automatically if your using the recommended KMS solution by microsoft and not trying to authenticate all machines with a MAK key.

 

unfortunately its oem keys here had to phone through 15 last week

[GoldenWonder]

Well I tried again, new image from the DVD and got it all ready.

 

Ran sysprep and lo and behold, a fatal error occured. What a crock!

 

Started a complete fresh install - joined it to the domain,activated it and then tried to sysprep. Same error.

 

I guess Windows 7 deployment will have to wait until BSF now.

Edited March 17, 2010 by GoldenWonder

[this_is_gav]

Another reason I've found for sysprep failing with W7 is SPTD drivers for virtual optical drives. Uninstall them before running sysprep and everything works fine. Just install them again after running sysprep instead.

[sonic1485]

We had the same error. Take it off the domain and then sysprep it and it should work

[GoldenWonder]

I've tried it both joined/disjoined to the domain but get the same error. The logs show the error is related to the sidebar somehow:

 

2010-03-18 09:14:13, Error                 SYSPRP WindowsSideShow: Failed to get task folder (0x80070003)
2010-03-18 09:14:13, Error      [0x0f0082] SYSPRP LaunchDll:Failure occurred while executing 'C:\Windows\System32\AuxiliaryDisplayClassInstaller.dll,WindowsSideShow_Sysprep_Generalize', returned error code 31
2010-03-18 09:14:13, Error      [0x0f0070] SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:An error occurred while running registry sysprep DLLs, halting sysprep execution. dwRet = 31
2010-03-18 09:14:13, Error      [0x0f00a8] SYSPRP WinMain:Hit failure while processing sysprep generalize internal providers; hr = 0x8007001f
2010-03-18 09:19:28, Info       [0x0f004c] SYSPRP WaitThread:Exiting spawned waiting thread
2010-03-18 09:19:28, Info       [0x0f0052] SYSPRP Shutting down SysPrep log

 

Oddly the sidebar seems to work fine (not that I have any gadgets running anyway)

[jsnetman]

Never had any problems with sysprep on our win7 machines and we have some intel drivers injected into the image. What machine are you sysprepping on and is it fully win7 compatible?

[garethEds]

We've not had any issues with Intel drivers messing up sysprep. This is using MDT2010 to capture an image - which it does with the 'Sysprep and Capture' tasg sequence.

 

If I remember, this is with the Intel 33 chipset (maybe 35)

 

Funny how it is diffrerent with everyone.

 

Gareth

[this_is_gav]

I've tried it both joined/disjoined to the domain but get the same error. The logs show the error is related to the sidebar somehow:

 

It's referencing Windows SideShow, which is a technology for having a display on a remote control or phone wirelessly.

[garethEds]

Which version of Windows 7 is this? At the start of the week I sysprepped 7Pro and today sysprepped 7 Enterprise - neither of which had an issue.

 

Is the sidebar in this editions? It hasn't come up when logging in so I'm going to assume not.

 

Could you be using the wrong 7?

 

You know what - forget my message. YOu said SideShow - I read sidebar. Doh...

 

GJE