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:windowssystem32sysprep.
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 
@ Matt_G : Thanks for the info!! I will have to give this a try during Christmas break. I will have to add that to my imaging process.
@William + Neil: I’m not sure I follow — I know I don’t need to create a new local account at startup, but I’d like to not be prompted to create one. Which part of the .xml do I edit?
Also Copy Profile=True is confirmed working for me, so no need to copy/rename Default.bak anymore (this was causing issues with new profiles pointing to the one folder initially created)
@Dennis E., do you have anti-virus installed? I had the same issue and from what I could find there are some apps that will cause this to happen if you have them installed before you sysprep. Anti-virus was one of them. Not every A/V product causes this but you could try it without and see if that helps. I am using ESET NOD32 btw.
@William, thanks for the reply. You might have misunderstood I actually want to prevent windows setup from asking to create a new local account. I already have a local account I want to use and I don’t want to add anymore. That is the only step I haven’t been able to eliminate yet.
How are most of you guys using SysPrep? As I got deeper in the rabbit hole, I realized that Sysprep was only one small piece of a much larger puzzle involving Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010. This isn’t going to be the case for everyone obviously – just curious about its many uses.
A brief aside… I’ve learned a ton about deployment while trying to figure all of this crap out.
I Keep getting a message saying “A fatal error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine”. I have done sysprep once and now it will not allow me to do it again after some updates where added, any ideas?
how do i get sysprep to remove the user and ask the end user for a user name.
In order to get Windows 7 Enterprise to prompt for a computer name, somebody said that if you remove the line
*
from your XML file, it will prompt. He was right, it does prompt for a computer name, but now the machine won’t properly add itself to my corporate domain. Odd thing is the computer THINKS it’s on the domain, it even acts like it is, and I can even login as a domain user on the machine, however, the machine will not appear in my domain anywhere. If I add that above line back, then the machine appears properly in my domain, but of course I am back to the original problem of having a random name, versus a name that I specify.
Any ideas guys? I’m stumped!
Oh, if it helps, this is how I launch sysprep:
sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:sysprep.xml
Anything I need to change?
In my last post it shows as the line in the XML document I am referring to is just
*
This is the line I am referring to: (I’ll put it in quotes, maybe then it will come thru)
“*”
Thanks again!
I have to throw a dumb question. I have never used sysprep but, now I have about 7 new laptops to deliver and I don’t want to install all software, blah, blah.
after the image is captured to the usb drive am I then to start the other laptops up to connect to that usb drive and load image on to them from that or what other ways with the new non-floppy computers?
Guide works great, the only issue I’m having is maintaining a persistant Wireless Profile in Windows 7. Is there any way to keep the profiles and their respective security settings so employee’s/students can just click on their respective network and type in their user info?
@Neil, I was having the same issue. The only way I have found to skip it is to set SkipMachineOOBE to true. I have not tested it extensively but all the information that would be garnered during this section I am supplying in my unattended file.
What I cannot seem to figure out is that user accounts I have previously deleted are re-appearing after I sysprep. I am using a user account called Tempuser to change all my settings an menus and then once I have replaced the default folder with it I delete the account. Once I sysprep the computer the account returns. Anyone have any idea how to permanently kill this account. I am deleting the account properly not just deleting its folder.
An update to my last post. Apparently I was going about deleting accounts all wrong. I guess I should have read a little better. While I was deleting the accounts from Computer Properties>Advanced Computer Settings>User Profiles, I was not deleting them from the computer management window. Seems silly now that I think about it but if your running into the same issue as I mentioned before this will fix it.
im in Western Australia what would i put for
TimeZone:
would i just put Perth or UTC+08:00 or what is there a list of acceptable entries here??
found it – it would be “W. Australia Standard Time”
@TheCalvin, what issues did you encounter with copying profiles? I’m not sure if it’s what prevented my image from working but I had the copyprofile=true set and when I rebooted the computer after sysprep I got an error saying “Windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file for pass [specialize]. The setting specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft-windows-shell-setup] clicked ok and setup will continue after restarting your computer.” And after restarting, this:
“The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Window installation cannot proceed to install windows click ok to restart the computer and then restart the installation.”
I’m just gonna copy the profile and be done with it but if you could let me know what issues you found from copying a profile over the default I’d appreciate it.
@Randy : You will want to put the image(s) on a network share. Then on the other computers you can map (net use) to the network share and simply apply the images from there. Hope that helps. Or you can deploy it from the USB stick, however, much easier and quicker from network share. Also, just a quick tip. Once you have the WinPE 3.0 environment loaded, you can actually remove the USB stick and everything will work just fine.
hi again, i have pretty much got everything sorted out except one wierd problem, i sysprep the machine after copying the profile to the Default
when i restart the machine all settings are as i would ecpect asp per my answer file except the desktop background has chnaged to black – any ideas would be appreciated
additional to my last post –
if i create any new user accounts they have a black background also
@ Chris :
Thanks to another Chris who posted a fix for this in earlier comments.
—————————————————————————————–
By the way to take care of the Wallpaper issue, I found away by doing this:
Adding a jpg or .bmp file to: %WINDIR%\web\wallpaper\image.bmp
Then edit your registry at: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\Wallpaper
Then manually copy the profile.
I also have this on my unattend.xml
Company Theme
%WINDIR%\web\wallpaper\image.bmp
—————————————————————————————–
Hope that helps!!
Thanks Brian
only one problem now – the background cant be changed any more
I am having problems with binding. I have filled in the Specialise -> Unattend Join, but it will not join my domain. I don’t get any error messages, and it appears everything runs fine, it just does not join.. it is most frustrating.
Has anybody successfully done tis? If so, do you have any tips?
@Neil — If you’re doing a super clean build then it shouldn’t be a problem, but I found that when a new user logged in with the renamed Default Profile, some of the programs I pre-installed on the image would still reference my image account’s name/location. This would cause problems especially if they were not local machine admins.
I was getting those same startup errors as well a week ago, but I made a new unattend.xml based off Brian’s and all has been fine since.
@Chris
After working on the black background issue most this morning and scouring the web for an answer I think I have finally discovered a solution. There is some problem with the way windows handles wall papers with its new transcoded system. The current wall paper will be saved in C:\user\\%USERNAME%\appdata\roaming\microsoft\windows\themes. Its stored in a file called transcodedwallpaper.jpg. If you delete this file for your default account users will still start with a black background but will now be able to change it. This is some problem with the trans coded file and copying users accounts.
I am also having the same problems as matt. my computer will not join to the domain in the unattend. ive viewed the netsetup.log located in c:\windows\debug and it appears that even though i am naming my computer during the sysprep prompt it is attempting to join the domain with a random computer name and not that allocated to it. because the computer account has not been pre created in the OU my joining account has permissions on it is failing. any ideas? this really is most frustrating
thanks brian for that answer. thanks also for this work.
I was reading again through all the instructions and came across a brain freeze. You posted your new WinPe.30 you have been using. You all so suggested reading the instructions for using DISM.
What confused me is how to integrate “your” new WinPE instead of following the DISM instructions which state to copy from the the DISM location.
Do I “simply” just create that location and copy your files to it then continue with the adding of drivers location, etc, etc?
Brian,
How do I get sysprep to automatically login as a user once it has completed? Instead of being prompted for a login, I would like the system to automatically login as an administrator level user, and then run a script to automate some functions.
Also, I assume I can use the “runonce” command via Regedit to automate my script, but is there also something I can put into my sysprep.xml file to auto launch my script ans thus avoiding having to use the runonce option?
Hi,
This tutorial is the best one i’ve found so far. it worked for me when I tested it with Virtual PC, but now that i’m running it on real machines, it fails.
When I start the computer, i’ve got a message saying “Windows can’t finish the configuration of the system. Restart your computer to try to finish the configuration.” I tried to do it but it’s not working.
does anyone has had the same problem?
[...] the hard drive! I have had the hard drive show before on the old sysprep I edited from this site Sysprep a Windows 7 Machine – Start to Finish – Blog.BrianLeeJackson.com With this command line has shown in that guide above sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown [...]
@George
There is an option under Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup (I am working with the 64bit version so it is called amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup for me) called FirstLogonCommands. Another option would be putting your script in the start up folder in the image written in such a way that it deletes its self after running once. The second option would obviously require that you update your image with every script change while the answer file command should let up point to a network location.
There is also an auto log-on option in the same place, however I have not used it and assume that this auto log-on will be persistent.
Hi,
I am trying to maintain the administrator account (has been renamed {“dept”admin} in the base image and I added stuff{shortcuts, files etc} to the desktop) & profile when I create my image.
When I run sysprep it deletes the admin account….(Duhh! I know)
What can I do to maintain that built in admin account when I run sysprep so that my admin profile and settings\password etc are consistent on my deployment builds?
Thanks,
Faraz
p.s. Sorry for the cross post….Everything else works great …awesome instruction set.
I have been working on sysprep, and ticked up the autologon administrator a/c, and changed it to 1 logon only, I then used the first logon commands to execute some powershell commands and add the PC to the domain – all works fine !
@Jason
Thanks, that worked very well! The only issue I have left is, if I get the system to prompt to a computer name, then it will not properly join my domain. I learned of the trick where you edit your xml file and remove the line that refers to computer with the * in it. By simply erasing that entire line, Windows 7 will not prompt you for a computer name. Problem is, by doing this, the machine will not properly join your domain. If I add back in the line, so that Windows will now provide a random name, then it joins the domain perfectly.
Anybody come across this? I would prefer to have sysprep (via the XML file) add my machine to the domain, but I figured, if there is no solution for this, then I could just not have sysprep add the machine to the domain, and on my first auto login, use some sort of command line to add the machine to the domain. Anybody know how I can do this? I know MS got rid of the netdom.exe for Win7, so I a unsure how to do this in Win7.
@anyone having unattended domain add issues
it appears that this just simply does not work in the sysprep for windows 7 as it attempts to add to the domain before you have been prompted for your computer name
my work around that may help
on your unattened.xml file remove the unattendjoin component and under the oobesystem add the autologon to the local administrator account with logonCount 1 and add password.
on your machine you want to sysprep create a powershell script to add computer to the domain.
and restart
my code omitting user specific data
############
$password = convertto-securestring “your password for account that adds to domain” -asplaintext -force
$credentials = new-object -typename System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -argumentlist “domain\AD user account to add to your ou”,$password
add-computer -domainname “your FQDN” -credential $credentials
c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe -t 0 -r
############
save this file as domainadd.ps1 in a folder on your c: drive
next create a domainadd.cmd and add to the all users startup folder
############
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe c:\domain\domainadd.ps1
del “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\domainadd.cmd”
############
now run your sysprep xml file as brian described
your machine on restart
1.goes though sysprep and any prompts you have configure( mine only requires computer name)
2.auto logon to adminstrator account
3.runs domainadd.cmd from startup folder calling domainadd.ps1 with powershell and removes domainadd.cmd from startup
4. machine adds to domain in OU where your pre-created computer account is or the default OU
5. restarts as part of domain
the powershell script that you create obviously contains senstive account details for adding to your domain. i have used group policy to remove this folder at startup
hope this helps
Paul
I was wondering if you have any thoughts on why I an unable to get my Win 7 Enterprise images to auto join the domain.
The following is the section of the code where I reference the domain join.
I get an error in C:\Windows\Panther\UnattendGC\Setupact.log
“NetJoinDomain attempt failed: 0×5″
“Unable to join domain; gdwerror = 0×5″
Thanks for any advice or pointers to where I may seek help on this.
Our domain is “AD”…in XP I used to use “ad.umn.edu”…I have tried both “AD” & “ad.umn.edu” in both “Join Domain” & “Domain” below.
Faraz
-
-
-
-
ad.umn.edu
-
ad
MyUserName
MyPassword
false
Trying to paste the code again
**-
**-
**-
**-
** ad.umn.edu
**-
** ad
** cfansmian0005
** jEHDtQ81
**
** false
**
**
@George
I have not come across an easy way to fix this problem in the unattended file. That being said it is a fairly easy problem to handle with a script. You can still join computers to the domain it just now requires the use of powershell. I am fairly new to powershell but scripting for it is vary similar to vbscript. You will want to create a text file with the following in it:
param([string]$DNSDomName,$pw,$DeployAcct)
$domainName=$DNSDomName
$domainPw=$pw
$domainAcc=$DNSDomName + “\” + $DeployAcct
$comp = get-wmiobject Win32_ComputerSystem
$comp.JoinDomainOrWorkGroup($domainName,$domainPw,$domainAcc,$null,3)
This should be saved as a .ps1 file. You can than call it from another script on any windows 7 computer with commands:
Powershell.exe set-executionpolicy unrestricted
Powershell.exe scriptlocation\scriptname
Depending on how you feel about security you may want to run the first command a second time and reset the execution policy back to restricted.
I don’t want to take full credit for this solution as I found it on another site. I hope this is not a no-no linking to someone elses blog but you can find information here: http://phawley.blogspot.com/2008/08/adding-machine-to-domain-with.html
>How do I get sysprep to automatically login as a user once it has completed?
> Instead of being prompted for a login, I would like the system to automatically
>login as an administrator level user, and then run a script to automate some functions.
I needed some thing to run at admin level, but didn’t want anything exposed to end users who might be imaging thier own PC via PXE.
Found this on Technet:
“%WINDIR%\Setup\Scripts\SetupComplete.cmd file. This file enables you to install additional applications, run custom Windows scripts (cscript/wscript), or make other modifications to the system before a user logs on.”
At the end of the SetupComplete.cmd command, it executes a batch that then deletes the SetupComplete.cmd before the final reboot.
Brian (and others),
When using rearm = 1, the CMID is duplicated image to image. This causes KMS not to increment. Setting rearm to 0 and running sysprep again created unique CMIDs and made KMS happy. Hope this saves someone else some time!
Thanks for the guide. Everything else worked great.
John
@Jason (and @Paul)
Jason, thanks for the info. That worked well. I’m not that great at scripting, but a co-worker who is helped me get your script working. so that works, well, I now have sysprep prompting me for a name, and via the powershell script auto adding the machine to my domain. Works very well!
@Paul,
That is very useful info, I’ll have to play around with it. Via sysprep, I am able to get my system to automatically login and perform whatever I need at this point (such as running the above mentioned script to add the PC to my domain),but this command is probably a nice way to clear out files at the end of the process.
This may be a bit off topic, and if it’s not appropriate just let me know.
However, one thing I would like to be able to have Windows 7 do, is after it’s been added to the domain, for it to determine the type of machine it is running on, and then run machine specific applications. I was thinking of running some sort of script that would use wmic (or whatever is needed) to get information of the system, and use that to determine what to do next. Example is, if it’s on our Lenovo T400 laptops, it would auto install a couple of Lenovo specific apps. If it’s a desktop, then it would not, etc… I can use the “wmic” command to pull out the machine model, or whatever other information needed to determine what machine it is. Is there a good resource out there that explains how this can be done?
And again, if this is too off-topic, I won’t keep asking about it!
@George
What your after is going to require some vbscripting. I would do it with something like:
Set objShell = CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
Set objWMIService = GetObject(“winmgmts://.\root\cimv2″)
Set objWMIComputerSystem = objWMIService.ExecQuery(“Select_ *fromWin32_ComputerSystem”,”WQL”)
and then to use that data something like this:
For Each oSys in objWMIComputerSystem
Model = oSys.Model
next
Model=replace(Model,” “,”")
and finally you could use an if statement to determine if Model is a laptop or not.
Ok this guide has been extremely helpful! I would like to know could this be tweaked to accomplish making a master image that I can transfer from one PC to another?
In other words can I sysprep machine called “master” copy that image to machine called “slave” start the slave machine and go through entering names, dates, currency type etc. Once all the info has been entered, the slave will have all the software and customization from master.
I tried following the steps above but I got an error “Windows could not finish configuring the system. To attempt to resume configuration, restart the computer.” and the machine kept restarting
One thing to note I copied the xml file from Brian’s example (as I have an AMD as well I thought it would have been ok).
Should I just go about doing the sysprep without an answer file?
If I were to do the following, will it work (trying to avoid doing this for a third time as it takes 4 hours to install windows, software, customize and prep it)?
1. Start from the Prepping you machine section
2. Go through all that and then instead of using the sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:NAMEOFYOURANSWERFILE.xml I would just use sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown / (or whatever command to just sysprep)?
Please help and thanks!
Ok this worked!
I was able go sysprepe without an unattend file.
Whew thanks!
Ok after installing a few programs all of a sudden this dont work
I got the same message again..
“Windows could not finish configuring the system. To attempt to resume configuration, restart the computer.”
I am lost!!
@Jason,
I tried pasting your script into a VBS file and running it to see what happens, but all I get is a an error stating that line 1, char 29 is an invalid character. Line 1, char 29is the quotation mark before the word WScript. I know almost nothing about vbscripting, so I don’t really know what is wrong with the script. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
The two wmic commands I think would work for me are:
wmic SystemEnclosure get ChassisTypes /value
and
wmic baseboard get product /value
With these two I will know if it is a desktop/laptop, and will know it’s specific model. So what I am trying to to is create a script that would use these two commands and simply based on the results run a specific batch file that would do certain things based on what machine type it is. I will take any suggestions you might have regarding how a script would look to do this! Thanks!
@Jason and to anybody else interested:
I figured out how to get this to work. Took quite a bit of research across many web sites, but finally a co-worker found a really great site that provided the last bit if crucial info.
Via the wmic command running a good old DOS batch file (ok, now they are called CMD files), I am able to determine if the hardware I am using is a laptop or desktop, and what brand it is. If anybody here is interested, I can certainly help you with that.
Is there a way to use the slmgr tool to activate windows quietly?
I wrote a batch file that uses the slmgr tool to activate Windows 7, however when my script runs slmgr, two prompts appear and the user must click on OK for both of these. I would like to remove these prompts. Getting a help info screen on slmgr shows many options, but none of them to run the tool in quiet mode.
The two commands you need to run to activate windows 7 via the command line are:
slmgr -ipk yourserialnumber
slmgr -ato
My batch file simply runs these commands, but after executing each one, the prompt appears to which the user has to click on OK.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Hey guys, I’m also getting the “Windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file for pass [specialize]. The setting specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup]. ” error message when I reboot with the copyprofile set to true in the unattend.xml file.
The machine is now stuck in a cycle of rebooting with this error message.. is there any way to get around it and back into Windows without having to wipe the drive clean and reinstall win7 from scratch and recustomize it? (i should’ve backed up.. argh)
Help! I followed instructions to a tee but after the shutdown the computer won’t start up again. Besides creating an image can it also mess up your current installation?