THIS IS OLD, PLEASE SEE NEW VERSION 2, CLICK HERE
This is a step by step guide on Sysprepping (and yes, I have made sysprepping a verb now) a Windows 7 machine from start to finish. This will guide you through building the unattended XML file, having the administrator profile copy over to default profile, and fixes for what is right now a not 100% working system from Microsoft. This is something I would have easily paid for when first starting this process. I don’t know why Microsoft can’t hand us a 100% working process. There will always be fixes, even with the RTM release.
Here is a list of what you will need:
- Latest version of WAIK : KB3AIK_EN.iso Version 1.0
- Windows Vista or Windows 7 Machine to build the XML file on
- ISO or DVD of Windows 7 Installation (x32 or x64)
- WinPE Boot Environment : BrianLeeJackson WinPE 3.0 BootLoader
Once you have WAIK installed on a machine your Start Menu should look like the image below:
Windows 7 WAIK Version 1
Go ahead and launch the Windows System Image Manager. Picture of the program is below.
Windows System Image Manager
We now need to open a Windows 7 image. If you have an installation DVD, insert it now. Or if you have an ISO of 7, go ahead and extract it to a folder on your desktop. (I recommend 7-zip). Back in Windows System Image Manager (WISM) go to the file menu and select “Select Windows Image”. You will now want to browse to the .CLG file in your Windows 7 installation (I am using Windows 7 Enterprise x64 in my example). It is located in the sources folder. See Image below.
Selecting CLG File - WSIM
Now we need to create a new answer file. Go to the file menu and select “Create New Answer File.” Right after creating one, go ahead and simply go to file menu and select “Save Answer File.” This will give your XML file a name and save location. Now you see we have two category folders, Components and Packages. Under the Components folder you see that we have 7 options:
- 1 windowsPE
- 2 offlineServicing
- 3 generalize
- 4 specialize
- 5 auditSystem
- 6 auditUser
- 7 oobeSystem
These are very important as these are the steps in which the XML file is sequenced.
The next part is a little confusing. You are going to add components, from under the “Windows Image” section on the bottom left hand side to the passes on your Answer File. To add a component, you can right click on them and select “add to # pass”. There are many different options you can add, but they have to be done in a certain order and pass otherwise your sysprep might fail. I am simply going to use the one I created as the example.
Download my Windows 7 x86 Sysprep XML File
Download my Windows 7 x64 Sysprep XML File
WSIM Passes
Here is more information about adding options under the passes:
1 WindowsPE
Nothing required in my example.
2 OfflineServicing
Nothing required in my example.
3 Generalize
amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP_neutral
Set 1 for SkipRearm to allow up to 8 rearms
4 Specialize
amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP-UX_neutral
SkipAutoActivation: true
amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_neutral
Computer Name: * (Randomly generated name, use this to test)
CopyProfile: false (doesn’t quite work, we will do that manually later)
Registered Organization: Microsoft (you must leave this in this section)
Registered Owner: AutoBVT (you must leave this in this section)
ShowWindowsLive: false
TimeZone: Pacific Standard Time
5 AuditSystem
Nothing required in my example.
6 AuditUser
Nothing required in my example.
7 OobeSystem
amd64_Microsoft-Windows-International-Core_neutral
InputLocale: en-us
SystemLocale: en-us
UILanguage: en-us
UserLocale: en-us
amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_neutral
RegisteredOrganization: YourCompanyName
RegisteredOwner: YourName
Under amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_neutral component, you will have a subheader for OOBE:
HideEULAPage true
NetworkLocation: Home
ProtectYourPC: 1
Under amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_neutral component, you will have a subheader for UserAccounts:
You will want to add both an administrator password and another local account with administrator rights and password.
If you have questions, look at my image above to see full layout of components, it should help. Also, you might have additional component headings that I didn’t mention. If you are simply testing first time, just delete them for now. You can add all sorts of components later on, you should do a successful sysprep if this is your first time, better to keep it simple and to the basics.
K, now go ahead and save your answer file. The building of the XML file is now done. That is the worst part. You would think that the sysprep process would get easier as new OS’s come out, but its pretty much the exact opposite.
Prepping your machine
K, now it is time to get your machine that you want to sysprep and capture an image of ready to go. First, you are going enable the administrator account on the computer. To do this on Windows Vista or Windows 7, open up a command prompt (Run as Administrator) and input the following command:
net user administrator /active:yes
Hit enter and you should see “successfully enabled Administrator Account”.
So you should currently have two accounts on your computer. The account you are currently logged into and the Administrator account which you just enabled. You are going to want to customize all of your preferences, favorites, bookmarks, taskbar, etc. under the currently logged in account. Once you have everything just perfect, you are going to reboot the computer and login to the administrator account. This next part is very important. You are going to go to “My Computer” and then to Organize and folder and search options. Go ahead and select “Show hidden files, folders, and drives”. Picture is below.
Show Hidden Files, Folders, and Drives
No go to “My Computer” and you are going to rename the Default folder to Default.bak (The CopyProfile setting in Sysprep on Windows7 does not seem to work yet). Next, copy your other user account, the one you customized everything in, right click on it and select copy. Then paste within that same window. It is going to come out as USERNAME – COPY. Now rename this copied folder to Default. Now after you sysprep your computer it will create all new accounts from that default profile folder using all your customized options.
The last thing we need to do is disable the WMP sharing service. This is a bug in Windows 7 and hopefully will eventually be fixed. If you don’t disable this before the sysprep your sysprep will simply fail to run. Go to run, msconfig, and then disable the “Windows Media Player Networking Sharing” service.
Now you are ready to sysprep your computer and capture an image of it!! Finally! So, grab that XML file you created earlier and you are going to place it on the machine you built your image on. Copy or move it to : C:\windows\system32\sysprep.
Now to run sysprep, navigate to that sysprep folder, hold SHIFT and right click and select “Open New Command Windows Here”.
Next, input the following commands:
sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:NAMEOFYOURANSWERFILE.xml
Your computer will now run the sysprep process, removing SID, etc, and then shutdown. You can have it restart, but shutdown is always safer if you have a ton of things going on. You will need to boot to your WinPE Boot environment when your computer starts back up. If you miss the first time upon boot up, you will have to re-input your sysprep commands. So do a shutdown, not a restart.
You can use my BrianLeeJackson WinPE3.0 BootLoader to boot up from USB or CD and capture your image. Once you capture your image, you are all done. You now have a sysprepped Windows 7 image. I have performed this task on over 120 computers so far and it has been flawless. The hard part was getting everything configured correctly. I hope this documentation helps someone out there, I know I would have killed for a tutorial like this when I first started 
Hey Brian and everyone else.. After many many hours of tinkering, I was finally about to get the copyprofile=true setting working. I actually wrote out the steps you need to take and why this is truly a much better way to customize a default profile in this comment box, but apparently it’s too long so I published my comment here:
http://copyprofile.blogspot.com/2009/12/sysprep-with-copyprofile-setting-right.html
Also, there is a hidden 100MB partition that Windows 7 setup creates that you need to backup or your sysprepped machine will not boot, claiming it cant find the bootmgr… I also meant to post here, but it was too long, so you can find it here:
http://copyprofile.blogspot.com/2009/12/sysprep-windows-7-and-100-mb-hidden.html
Brian, I also saw you were testing whether you could build an image in a VM and deploy it to a physical machine.. any luck with that?
Hi All!
I had a couple of surprises when it came to the Windows 7 sysprep process and stumbled upon this very informative thread.
First: Thank you Brian for this post! It really cut to the chase. Without it I’d still be drowning in new docs and tools without a successful image in sight
I would like to put my 2 cents in on a couple of things I tripped over:
The screenshot for the 7_enterprise_x64_sysprep has a run_synchronous command under the specialize step. I looked at the screenshot and put my net user administrator /active:yes under that [as I would like the admin account on the screen alongside the user account]. The screenshot is misleading: That step should be done under the 1 Windows PE step [as suggested in the WSIM tool itself]. If left in the specialize step it will crash the sysprep. It wasn’t specified in your instructions, per se, Brian, but a picture tells a thousand words sometimes – lol
Re user profiles: I followed Brian’s steps and made my perfect account with perfect setup. I ran into some problems, which Nathan has outlined in his reply blog post.
There are two problems with the copyover and one possible problem with the copyprofiles trick.
First, the registry settings still point to the original profile. A huge problem since I renamed the users account instead of copying it. This lead to invalid paths and settings quite often. Fixed with Registry Crawler – which I would have to run everytime I created a new profile [not a huge problem in my case but hardly automagical]
Second problem, which I’m pretty sure will still be encountered, is “ini” files. All those files under AppData that have hardcoded usernames in them. I am pretty sure, from my Vista experiences, that these settings are transferred verbatim and not renamed by CopyProfiles=True. Examples are DTA Manager in Firefox and Google Chrome default save folder, to name 2 of many.
Third, anyone with daemon tools / alcohol 120% / etc… Had the sysprep fail during the services step. Hit Shift+F10 and type sc config sptd start= disabled.
Reboot and continue. Once you’re image is done, you can go back and sc config sptd start= boot.
Hey Brian, this is in response to your comment that you left for me at http://copyprofile.blogspot.com/2009/12/sysprep-windows-7-and-100-mb-hidden.html
When I tried to apply the following commands:
bcdedit /set {default} device partition=c:
bcdedit /set {default} osdevice partition=c:
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device partition=c:
without restoring the hidden 100mb partition, I received the following error after each line:
“The boot configuration data store could not be opened.
The system cannot find the file specified.”
No matter what I tried, I always would get that error message after trying bcdedit… I’m not sure if this error is only happening to me, but that is why I recommend to also backup the hidden partition and restore it properly (you do not need to use the bcdedit commands when do it that way)
@George
I’m trying to do the same as you with the wmic commands to install relevant drivers and apps, how did you do it in the end?
Thanks
Hello Brian. Thank you for the guide it was a life saver for me at work. I did have one question though. Once the image is complete and I log in I go to My computer and it displays that I still need to activate windows. Once I connect the computer online I run the Activate online option and it works fine, but is there a way for this to be done automatically without manually Activating every time I image a PC? Thank you for your time on this matter.
Hello Brian, I wanted to say thanks for the info here with the exception that you didn’t specify if i am supposed to install the WAIK on the system to be imaged or if I can use it on any system. Point is I don’t want it in my image. I have not actually started the process yet so it may be self explanitory but I have had to sift through many such Microsoft messes in the past. Thanks for all your work, James.
@Nick,
I posted an answer to your question but it did not seem to post. E-mail me at gbako at yahoo dot com and I’ll e-mail you back a copy of the script I wrote and it should help you out quite a bit.
I think the post was probably too long, which is why I am thinking it didn’t appear.
Does anybody know of a way to use slmgr to install a license and activate windows, and avoid the prompts (to which you have to click on OK to continue) from appearing?
I need to include in my script the ability for the machine to automatically insert our license and activate, but the prompts appear, and I would like to avoid any prompts so that the machine can be left unattended for the entire setup procedure.
Here are the two lines I use
slmgr -ipk 12345-12345-12345-12345-12345
slmgr -ato
Problem is when you run each command, it will make a prompt appear to which you must click o OK to continue. I did a help on slmgr but surprisingly there is no quiet option or unattended option that I can find that will work.
Could you please explain what the /unattend switch exactly does? Is there some sort of integration of the answer file with the image? Thanks!
Guys, I was able to answer my own question. To run slmgr.vbs and use it to install your license and to activate windows without any prompts, use the commands listed below:
cscript //b c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs /ipk 12345-12345-12345-12345-12345
cscript //b c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs /ato
By running the slmgr.vbs thru cscript, you can give it the //b parameter, which turns of all output. That way, it runs, your system gets activated, and no prompt appears.
Now I am currently running the free 90 day trial of Windows 7 Enterprise, so I do not have a MAK license yet, so the command will probably be a bit different once I get that, but no matter, I should be able to run any slmgr.vbs commands thru cscript to avoid any prompts.
Thanks for this Brian,
After two days of tinkering with this I’ve come to the conclusion that this is simply not worth my time.
I’ve been an MCSE since ’99, worked as an MCT for several years as well, and have been working in the industry for over 15 years. The point being I know what I’m talking about – or maybe I’m just getting stupider as I get older – I used to specialize in deployments – I’m wonder why is this so complicated now? There are SO many options and isssues. Once something starts working, there is something else – and hours of reading to try and understand the process. It just seems like a monumental waste of my time. I understand what MS is trying to do … but come on – If I’m not an OEM and I just want a simple answer file to answer the mini-setup questions on reboot following a sysprep, it shouldn’t take 2+ days to figure this out. setupmgr would have accomplished this and been ready to deploy in under half an hour, even for the first time you saw it.
Hi Brian:
Thanks for the blog, this is exactly what I have been looking for for the last 3 work days. MS Documentation was very circular in nature, this made it much easier to deploy a standard image to computer labs.
You guys are great helped me out a lot. Got a question, are you guys setting up Auto Enabling on BitLocker?
Is there any way to change the POST sysprep autologin count? Let me explain.
There is a setting you can put into your unattended.xml file that tells Windows after sysprep has run how many times it should automatically login with an account you specify in the XML file. Is there any way to change this number AFTER sysprep has run?
The reason I ask is because depending on the machine that my image would run on, there will be additional software that I would like to automatically install, and these programs would require additional reboots. In order to avoid having the tech have to manually log back in, I would like to be able to add additional auto logins to Windows in order to automate the logging back in after reboots.
@DBeav: The /unattend switch simply tells sysprep to use your answer file configuration once you reboot.
The solution to the “Windows Could Not Finish Configuring the System” problem that some people are reporting is to uninstall WAIK before running sysprep. Somehow having WAIK installed on the machine makes sysprep not work.
@Everyone: Thank you everyone for your input. I have combined a lot of the input given and have done some further testing, and have compiled a new walk through. Thank you George, Nathan, and everyone else who helped contribute. The new walk through, the hopefully better and more correct walk through can be found here: http://blog.brianleejackson.com/sysprep-a-windows-7-machine-%E2%80%93-start-to-finish-v2. Some features: No more manual copying of default profile, windows now automatically activates, the sysprep.xml file is deleted automatically, administrator is logged in automatically and no other local users are needed, and computer name is prompted…. Hope you enjoy and look forward to your feedback.
@gbako: I am no longer answering questions on this article, if you have a question please read through the new version 2 walk through I have and re-post the question if it still applies. Thanks!
http://blog.brianleejackson.com/sysprep-a-windows-7-machine-%E2%80%93-start-to-finish-v2
Under 7 oobeSystem amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_neutral component, are the password displayed in plain text after a device is imaged?
I’m trying to figure out what PlainText means and I can’t change it under the administrator of LocalAccounts.
@Kyle: The passwords are not displayed in plain text in Version 2 of sysprep. Please read my updated article on sysprep that I wrote yesterday. There are a lot of changes, all good, and sysprep works a lot smoother. I am no answering questions anymore on first version of sysprep, only on 2nd version: http://blog.brianleejackson.com/sysprep-a-windows-7-machine-%E2%80%93-start-to-finish-v2
Intriguing site. My co-workers and I were just discussing this the other evening. Also your page looks nice on my old sidekick. Now thats uncommon. Keep it up.
Wow I have to say this is great. Even writing that post must have taken you a seriously long time. Thanks for your effort!
Heya i got to your site by mistake when i was searching bing for something off topic here but i do have say your site is really helpful, like the theme and the content on here…so thanks for me procrastinating from my previous task, lol
Nice post, thank you! Can you tell us about the third paragraph more?
Hi Brian,
You article is fantastic and easy to follow but I am having an issue that I cannot seem to figure out. When I get into audit mode and I begin my tasks to configure my admin account, I reboot a few times sometimes 1 or 3 times, number doesn’t seem to matter but after one of the reboots that I am trying to do, I get an error message that it cannot load my files or it fails. The specific error says “Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer, restart the installation.” How can I fix the problem, specifically what is causing it, I cannot seem to figure out what thing that I am doing is causing it. I do not think it has anything to do with adding a computer to the domain but that is one task that I preform that allows me to push some altiris jobs and streamline it a little more. Any input is greatly appreciated, but it does not always happen after doing any specific install or job.
Andrew
I still wait purchased windows 7 from microsoft. It sounds like it should be different from vista back when it came out, so I can’t wait!!
Good Post. Can you email me back, please. Awaiting your Answer.
Hello Brian!
I was so happy when I found your post here. It is very useful because now we would like to prepare a huge amount of destop PCs with Windows 7 and we have no experience with sysprep at all. So thank so much for this guide.
Because we had no enough time to customize our answer file, first we wanted to try to use your example here. But… I do not know what was wrong, the sysprep does not work – the big question is: why. When we restart/start the system first after we run the sysprep command with its parameters (shutdown ect.), we got an error message which said that the sysprep could not finish the system preparation. Also the Win7 said that we needed to restart the computer again to finish the preparation. After that we falled in the trap, because every time when Win7 started we got this error message again and again – so we had to restore the previous image file of Win7 we prepared before the sysprep.
What we modified in this example: we skipped the auto activation also we did not choose the profile dir copy, because we used a different user account to customize the system. When we found your guide till that time we had a customized user account and we wanted to use it for default profile.
So I do not know what we made wrong, and if you have an idea about this and free time, please help us to solve our problem.
Thank you very much in advance,
Regards,
ViC
Oh, I am sorry… I did not read corretly all of the pots here. Sorry about my previous message I found a solution here. To remove the WAIK. We will try it!
Thanks Guys!
ViC
I am having the same problem Andrew Fichera is having. I would install and configure a few things, and it seems fine, but after a few more other programs, the next reboot, I’m stuck with that message.
Please help!
—
Hi Brian,
You article is fantastic and easy to follow but I am having an issue that I cannot seem to figure out. When I get into audit mode and I begin my tasks to configure my admin account, I reboot a few times sometimes 1 or 3 times, number doesn’t seem to matter but after one of the reboots that I am trying to do, I get an error message that it cannot load my files or it fails. The specific error says “Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer, restart the installation.” How can I fix the problem, specifically what is causing it, I cannot seem to figure out what thing that I am doing is causing it. I do not think it has anything to do with adding a computer to the domain but that is one task that I preform that allows me to push some altiris jobs and streamline it a little more. Any input is greatly appreciated, but it does not always happen after doing any specific install or job.
Andrew
Brian, Great job with the step by step walk through. We have been wrestling with successfully extracting a win7 64bit image & sysprep for about 3 weeks.
I followed your guide and created the xml file using WAIK. The problem I run into is after I run sysprep, the machine shuts down, I then use a ghost boot disk and extract the image to my ghost server. Upon reboot, all I get is a logon screen with “other” user. I never get prompted to name the computer, create an account, set passwords, etc. And since I don’t know the computer name-I cant log in even if the accounts were still active. Any assistance would be more than welcome.
Using Ghost ver. 11.5.1.2266
Extracting Image from Dell Optiplex 760
OS Installation: Win 7 64 Bit Business
Sysprep.xml: Upon request, didn’t want to clog up the comments.
*Update*
Tried this xml file on vmware, hyper V, Dell GX620 Box, and a HP 64 Bit Box-It all worked perfect. I have discovered that the Dell 760 64 Bit boxes are not allowing sysprep to run properly. I have also read that the 780′s suffer from this as well.
Disregard my previous posting. Once again, phenomenal step by step guide-Mad Props to Brian.
It’s unbelievable that even today, after so many years Windows is on the market, we are still relegated to a Windows PE builder tool to create a personalized image of the OS.
By the time I created the latest image – before moving on Mac – for Windows XP I spent so many hours trying to configure PE and getting it work that when I many years late discovered tools that was doing the same in a quick manner I felt so frustrasted.
Why Windows 7 didn’t get it simpler?
Line 4: net user administrator /active: yes (does “administrator” refer to the username or the permissions? The reason I ask is the username “administrator” has been change to “Hello”. The Password:*
Line 7: AutoLogon (enabled: False) since I want to manually logon to the computer after sysprep. I also left Username:Hello
UserAccounts – AdministratorPassword:*
Local Account[Name="Hello"]
Description:Local Administrator
DisplayName:Hello
Group:Administrators
Name:Hello
Password*
I don’t know why I can’t login with username: Hello and the password I set in the image. Any thoughts or solutions?
Anyone successful done this with several images in wds?
Yes I have. I found that if I create an imaged (all syspreped nicely) and use WDS it ignores the sysprep unattend.xml settings unless I add the unattended installation xml in the options on the image.
To test this I deployed the image with imagex /apply to a few systems and it worked fine. Do the same with wds and it doesn’t work unless you add the unattend.xml file to the image properties.
Dan.
I agree with Doug and Andrea… As much as I like Windows 7… this whole process is a nightmare. It took me countless hours just to learn how to create a bootable CD/DVD and USB flash drive with winpe and to create/restore a wim image. I’m looking into learning this new sysprep method and have decided this just isn’t worth the time or effort. It’s much quicker/easier just to click next next and next and type the name of the user and computer name and be done with it all.
I’ve looked into MDT and WAIK but again… too much trouble.
I’ve been cloning machines for over 15 years… I know all about ghost, clonezilla, etc.
This is insane…
Receives the following error messege:
Windows could not parse or process unattend answer files[c:\windows\panther\unattend.xml] for pass [oobe system]. The settings specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing setting for component [Microsoft-windows-shell-setup]
Is there something i am doing wrong? I can also send you a copy of my .xml file
Has anyone solved the problem that Andrew Fichera is having? “Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer, restart the installation.”
Any help would be appreciatted.
Thumbs up
Hello Brian,
I am having the same problem that Ash had on November 16, 2009 when you create the unattend file, save it and close the program. Then you want to edit the unattend file, I get this error message
Upon opening WSIM and selecting my Unattend file, I’ll get the following two errors:
-Cannot find the file D:\work\Enterprise\install.wim
-The catalog file associated with the Windows image Windows 7 ENTERPRISE(Catalog) is out of date.
I did copy the whole source folder to the hard drive and make sure the folder had rights.
I recreated the unattend file, save it and close the program. Reopen the program and file and still get the same message.
I was reading some post to see if there’s answer, but I didn’t see anything.
What could be causing the problem? Any thoughts? Please let me know.
Joe,
I had the same problem and I found out that it’s pointing to 100mb system reserve partition.
Try this command
bcdedit /set {default} device partition=C:
bcdedit /set {default} osdevice partition=C:
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device partition=C
@Eric:
TIP: In windows 7 you do not need to know the computer name to log on locally. You can simply use this syntax for any local account logon:
“.\administrator”
The “.\” specifies local host as the logon domain.
Great work Hey Brian but i have a question
i want to install windows with the only Account i logged in ( not with Two Accounts)
I managed to do that but always asked about password ?
I didn’t set any password and don’t want too .
I want only to be taken to Desktop without any stop screean ( user and password screean )
can you help me to solve that problem
my Answer file
http://www.mediafire.com/file/jjeyn5…tounattend.zip
TAke care
Yassin
[...] · Sysprep on a Windows 7 Machine, Start to Finish [...]
I am having the same problem as Andrew Fichera and Joe. I have narrowed down the problem, but don’t know how to resolve it.
We have two domains right now (trying to move from one to the other). When the computer was being setup on the Domain1, we had no issues with the “Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer, restart the installation.” However, when doing this on the Domain2, I have this issue, and can duplicate it.
If I setup Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit from disk (machine doesn’t seem to matter), and then join it to the domain under the audit user Administrator account, 1 reboot it works fine. To speed up the reboot process, I run ‘gpupdate /force’. While my machine is in the Computers container on the domain, no policy should be applied, but after a reboot, I ALWAYS get this error message.
Any thoughts?
Hi all,
First, I want to say thanks to Brian for posting this topic. It is really helpful for me, but I still have some problems which I can’t solve them. I want to deploy 10 computers and I want the computer start from pc1, pc2, pc3, …., p10, but I don’t know how to do that in Window 7? Another problems is that I want to remove all games after deployment. Please everyone help me about these.
Was there a solution to this problem: The catalog file associated with the Windows image Windows 7 ENTERPRISE(Catalog) is out of date. With these warnings: Cannot find the file D:\work\Enterprise\install.wim and The Catalog file associated with the Windows image Windows 7 ENTERPRISE(Catalog) is out of date
XML (2) warnings:
After creating the XML, saving, closing and reopening these two cautions appear under the XML tab when the XML is reopened:
• Cannot find the file D:\work\Enterprise\install.wim
• The Catalog file associated with the Windows image Windows 7 ENTERPRISE(Catalog) is out of date
The ISO was downloaded from Microsoft and copy to a fold on the c-drive. There is nothing in the D-drive. The “D:\work\” folder does not exist on the original ISO.
What is pointing this application to look at the d-drive?
Why is the Catalog out of date?
I am using the Windows System Image Manager (6.1.7600.16385).
I downloaded the ISO from Microsoft: 7600.16385.090713-1255_x64fre_enterprise_en-us_EVAL_Eval_Enterprise-GRMCENXEVAL_EN_DVD.iso (64-bit).
Despite these issues the image was successfully built, captured and works.
I have searched and found this same problem dating back to 2008 and none of the forums have provided an answer.
The problem above is solved (XML (2) warnings). Now that I know the steps I was able to go back and start from the begining. I extracted the ISO once again with 7-zip to the C-drive and recreated the answer file using the new files and a new answer file. The problem did not return. I guess I was using the image copied from the DVD to the hard drive. I also attempted to make an answer file from the DVD earlier and got the same problem.