Hello all,

I'm trying to sysprep a 2008 image to roll out to a group of users. I've created an unattended install xml file, copied it to the system (c:\windows\system32\sysprep) and run it from a command prompt with this command line:

sysprep /OOBE /Generalize /shutdown /unattend:c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.xml

The result is an error message "Windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file [c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.xml]. The specified file does not exist." (see attached screen shot).

In the c:\windows\system32\sysprep\panther folder is a couple of logs. Here's the contents of one of the logs:

[sysprep.exe] UnattendFindAnswerFile: Explicitly provided unattend file [c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.xml] does not exist.

However, the file is there! If i run notepad and paste in the above path to open the file, it works just fine. I've also tried not specifying the full path (figuring sysprep.exe would see the file in the folder where sysprep.exe is run from). But that doesn't work either.

I can run sysprep alone without the unattend file and that works fine (but it obviously doesn't apply my custom settings).

Has anyone run into this issue before? Any help would be appreciated.

Ignore this post. I figured it out.

I was using a complex name for my XML files (with a date code and build name). When i copied them to the system, i renamed them. When i renamed them, the system tagged a .xml to the end so i ended up with a double extension (sysprep.xml.xml).

Yesterday when i was banging my head on this thing, i swear i was able to open the file with notepad directly. I guess i must have browsed to it. And since 2008 was hiding the extension of system files it looked normal to me to see it in explorer that way. Ah well...

These aren't the droids you're looking for, move along...