Thanks for the helpful guide, "Creating WIM images of Windows XP for system deployment using Windows PE" After reading this I created a bootable winpe DVD , which included a wim image. This syspreped image works fine when deployed from WDS. When deploying from the DVD WinPE boots, images to 100%, and completes, when the mini setup starts i get the error message

Fatal Error

An error has been encountered that prevents setup from contining.

Windows is unable to start because the registry could not be updated. to

address the problem contact your manufacturer. windows must shut down now =(

I've read what microsoft has to say about this, and from some other forums that said to delete C:\windows\system32\microsoft\protects-1-5-18-user before sysprep. I checked my image and there was nothing in there. Any ideas?

edit: i am Not using don't regenerate sids

Edited February 16, 200917 yr by MarkAtWag

This error usually occurs if you apply an image to an existing Windows partition without formatting it first.

Good call there... noob mistake

Works perfectly now, deployed my custom image via winpe dvd. Thanks!

related question, I'm going to be sending these out to a remote helpcenter, and want to load as many images as i can. Most of our .wims where uploaded strait to wds, and the file sizes are under 2mb. The image i just deployed was the full 2+gb one. Are the wds ones so small because they use the res.rwm file? if so would we need to burn the res.rwm and the small .wim files, assuming those just contain the differences within that image catagory.

I haven't used this method of uploading images before, but from what I understand is that the RWM files are more like file tables. They point to specific files within the WIM file. The WIM file contains all the actual files that are part of your image.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770460.aspx

As far as burning, you would also need to have access to a WDS at your destination in order to redeploy those images, unless you know a CLI method to do it.

Ok, yes it seems that the res looks at the wims to see what changes etc to make to the image. res then contains all the windows and program files. For this case it seems i wont be able to even try this, since for laptops our res is 9gb .. too big for the dvds we want to distribute. I have access to our wds, but i just want to create dvds for the remote site which are yet to get a server built for them and need to start using our images.

Thanks for the help!

You can try to do a stand-alone capture with imagex, and use fast (or even maximum) compression. That may fit on a DVD, as long as its a base image.