XP Sysprep - Local Admin account problem

[mikerowsopht]

Hi All,

This is the last problem I have with deploying XP via WDS although this is more of a sysprep problem I think instead of a WDS problem.

My XP machine that I have built for capturing is added to the domain, thought I would mention this first as people say to remove the pc from the domain before capturing but sysprep removes the domain anyway and it doesn' t cause me any problems once the SID is re-generated and the pc is named.

My problem is that basically I set a password for the local admin account, lets call the password "password"

During Sysprep I am asked to create a local account, if I do not create one it will be automatically created for me, I cannot name this account administrator or Guest.

I usually create a local admin account called Admon with a password of password.

What is happening is after the pc is finished being deployed and ready to use I can log onto the pc locally with username Admon and no password at all !

If I log onto the pc locally as administrator and use the password "password" I can log in.

So bascially the passsword I am setting locally for Admon is not working and sysprep is using this passowrd and applying it to the local Administrator account instead.

Realistically I don't even want the Admon account there and would prefer to set the password for administrator which it won't allow me to do.

I don't want to delete the admon account every time I deploy an image

Has any1 ever come across this before, it's really annoying !

Thx All

[mikerowsopht]

Where's the help :-(

Here's the answer to the above Q : btw this is only for XP service pack 3, if you have XP SP2 ( I think ) you don't need to do this as it happens automatically but I haven't tested it on a SP2 build and never will.

Basically if you add the below ( Bolded & underlined ) into your sysprep file it will copy or move the local Admon account which is created during sysprep into the administrator account and as such removes the Admon account which has no password set because of sysprep

;SetupMgrTag

[unattended]

InstallFilesPath=C:\sysprep\i386

UpdateServerProfileDirectory=1

[Guiunattended]

EncryptedAdminPassword=No

[userData]

FullName=Admon

OrgName=MyOrg