Sysprep Prompts for Volume License Key

[jollycj]

I'm trying to trouble shoot why in certain instances my Sysprep image prompts to enter the volume license key and in other cases it does not. It doesn't appear to even pick up the ProductID from the sysprep.inf file and I know its valid as when I enter the same key it works fine. I also recall if its a bad it key that it picks up from the sysprep.inf it tells you. I also am getting prompted for the Administrator password now as well.

The scenario is that I extract my Ghost disk image which has a hidden partition at the beginning of the drive with Win PE and a second bootable partition where the Sysprep image is. It deploys fine with no prompts.

After Sysprep is complete and the OS loaded I then get everything set to go with my changes and run sysprep.exe –quiet –pnp –mini –activated –forceshutdown. I also set the Administrator password to blank. I am using the same Sysprep that worked from the Ghost image above but I am doing this on a different machine from where I initially built the image.

I recaptured that same image using this same process before and had no problems. Now I am prompted for the license key and admin password every time Sysprep runs. I'm using a Volume License so its not related to the limit of the 3rd activation. I also tried to re run Sysprep on a single partition machine and got the same results.

I've looked over several message boards and all the Sysprep tech notes I could find but no luck so far. So if anyone has thoughts or suggestions please let me know.

thanks

Chris

[fly]

Can you post your sysprep.inf (obviously deleting important things, like your key)

[jollycj]

I ended up getting the problem fixed, thanks for the offer of help though.

The resolution was to delete the $Winnt$.inf file in the Windows\System32 directory. Every time you run sysprep this file is/was supposed to be over written but it was not. Once I deleted the file and reran sysprep all was good. Apparently there is a certain Microsoft hotfix that prevents you from updating this file but I have not confirmed this so I'm not sure if that is really the case.

[fly]

Insteresting. That's good to know. Thanks for posting what fixed it.