Hello all-- After looking long and hard I hadn't been able to find anyone else who ran into this issue. Tried to google search but maybe I'm not being specific enough -- anyways: I have a sysprepped XP ghost image. I built the image with a plain WINXP CD (corporate-- no service pack), copied the i386 directory to the %systemroot% (so its C:\Windows\i386), modified the registry to change the sourcepath to the appropriate directory, ran setupmgr to develop a sysprep.inf, emptied the recycle bin, ran sysprep then imaged the sucker. As a trial for the sysprep process I rebooted it and let it run on itself. I ran sysprep with the following switches: sysprep -reseal -mini -pnp -quiet -reboot The mini setup runs fine and ultimately reboots to the login screen (i also changed the login preference to require login and not to use the welcome screen. I am a traditional buff, so I use the old desktop as well). At first login, the system will respond for about 10 seconds then nothing. After a couple of minutes CTRL+ALT+DELETE will come up and I can run the task manager-- the system idel process has 99% of the CPU. I reboot a couple of times and the same thing happens. What I noticed after giving it like a 20 minute break or so is that when I come back all appears to be okay, but I've only tried this on two occassions. I will post my sysprep.inf shortly, but it is pretty straightforward-- no commands to run in the runonce or anything of that nature. I am using an encrypted admin password, there is no autologin or anything of that sort. Can anyone tell me what could be causing this?