Comments on: A funny experience with Windows 7, Sysprep and View 4.5

By: Limey

Limey — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:41:58 +0000

This is a new (crappy) ‘feature’ of sysprep only 3 tries of running generilze before it locks up the whole system and you can no longer run it – a real pain if you’re not expecting it.

Anyway, you can put the following in a batch file to activate silently:

cs cript //b c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs /ipk 12345-12345-12345-12345-12345
cs cript //b c:windowssystem32slmgr.vbs /ato

If you get the message again and really want to know what’s going on do the following:

Press Shift + F10 for a cmd prompt and then you can navigate to c:windowspanther – from here review the dumpfile.xml file (last 75 lines generally tell you what failed)

Also in this mode you can press the WindowsKey + E (windows explorer) and kind of get a desktop experience, I got a semi-usuable system for troubleshooting

By: Clement

Clement — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 08:36:01 +0000

Have you tried skiprearm in your sysprep? http://d3planet.com/rtfb/2010/05/18/creating-an-activated-windows-server-2008-r2-vmware-template-using-microsoft-sysprep/

I’d be curious to hear if this works for you. Someone who read my blog seems to have the same issue so I’ll be linking back to this post. Awesome info and thanks!

By: René Dissel

René Dissel — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 10:08:01 +0000

Hello Mike,
Maybe you can solve any problems by using a KMS server for activating the Windows 7 clients.
There is information on setting up an KMS server at MS: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd772269.aspx

After you have setup the KMS server u can use the KMS keys that Microsoft provides:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff793406.aspx

This is the preferred method of activating clients and servers when i need to deploy allot of VMs (or physical machines in that case).