TimPhillips

Turned out to be a more simple fix than I thought. It turns out with vista you don't HAVE to enter a cd key until activation time. Quite surprising coming from Microsoft though.

I've got the same (or similar) problem. I do an unattended install (a random product key included in the autounattended.xml file), then make an image for deploying. Then after deploying I reseal/generalize the pc ready to give to the customer. But when I test this part it prompts for everything but the user key. It kinda worked with vista RC2 (would prompt but you could hit next even if it was empty) but not at all with the full release. Is there a way of fixing this so the user must enter the key on first boot? Or is there a special sysprep/PE key that can be obtained?