Vista Sysprep. skip new user creation

[kurbycar32]

I have vista Business 32bit using the WAIK to create the unattended.xml file. i have everything figured out except on initial boot it asks me to create a new local user. i dont want any local users except the local admin account, everything else is handled by the domain. I searched the MSFN before posting and didnt find anything.

Edited October 28, 2008 by kurbycar32

[kurbycar32]

It turns out my mistake was that I was trying to think for myself. The solution was to create the local admin account as part of sysprep. I thought this was redundant because the account already existed but I guess that’s just how it works. it appears that you must create a local account but you can make that account the local administrator, which you would have anyway

[tomatthe]

Interesting, I was creating a dummy acct, and having it deleted on first login. Your way seems much better.

I do have a question about accts created using the unattend.xml files though.

Say I run sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /unattend=unattend.xml /shutdown

If I was to boot to a winpe cd, open up the unattend.xml file and change the settings for the account it creates, I was thinking this would change the acct that is actually created when it boot and comes out of sysprep. However what i've found is that it doesn't seem to matter i change in the xml file, it uses what wsa in the file when sysprep was originally run.

Does anyone know where the data is stored in the xml file when the machine shuts down? I would like to be able to edit the file before machines are booted to have a user acct created that I can set. Essentially using the same image on various machines, but have a different acct created when it boots based on who's computer it is.

tks for any help

[kurbycar32]

your right about the unattend.xml file not helping on start up. the settings for many of those features are queued to happen on start up as part of the sysprep process, meaning it executes those commands before shutdown and before you extract your image. your problem seems simple though. instead of using the sysprep process to create your accounts write a script to create them on first startup, that would be easy enough to edit and you could guarantee that it ran after the first boot. also depending on your environment you could manage accounts using group policy

[tomatthe]

well my hope had been to have the acct created and the machine auto login to that acct.

The other option was to do something similar to what you mentioned, have it login to a default acct, force acct creation then log off the default acct. I'm sure I could get things working this way somehow, but had really hoped I could locate how to have the acct created and it login to the acct on first boot.

We reimage about 60 machines a day for various students, and use a scripted ghost install to obtain their acct info before imaging, then I am hoping to put something in place after the image is put down to have their acct recreated at boot.

Tks for the super fast reply.

Edited June 4, 2009 by tomatthe