Patched Factory Dell Sysprep image Error

[rodommoc]

I am working on a M$ Updated/Patched factory image for Dell PCs. I took a pc straight from Dell and Ghosted it prior to letting it run its first boot sequence. Then I left it boot normally; then I extracted Dells Sysprep and factory directories from the Ghost image. I ran sysprep with reseal and the pc was just like it came from the factory. I reghosted the factory image to the PC and did all M$ updates, critical and non-critical. Then I ran Sysprep again but now I’m getting “The System is Not Fully Installed” error on the reboot and all it does is reboot when I click OK and to comes back to the same error. I also have a Ghost image of the M$ patched configuration. I can boot the PC 100 time and it works but then when I run sysprep it gives me the error. Has anyone seen this? Any help would be much appreciated.

[squeakstar]

hi, hey i'm experiencing the very same problems - did you figure it out at all, as your post is from some time ago now?

i got past your error but after that it aint good and i've no idea if i've done something wrong or because i'm using an dell/oem installation to sysprep from, and that somehow invalidates sysprepping again, ya know coz the xp install has been dell-a-fied???

[cluberti]

Sysprep'ing the same machine more than once can cause all types of problems, so I'm not shocked a machine that Dell already sysprep'ed is giving you trouble the second or third time around. From what I understand, you have basically sysprep'ed that image twice, and with Dell's initial sysprep, that brings the total to three. Usually you can do two and get away with it, but it's almost always the third sysprep that screws things up.

I'd suggest going back to your original image and get things the way you want, and sysprep that. Even though that means that image has been sysprep'ed twice, it should still work almost 100% of the time on new machines.

[squeakstar]

TBH my methodology, was not as convoluted as the original posters... I re-installed from the Dell OEM cd, updated OS patches and drivers and required applications, making an image before running sysprep (OS fully working for quick restore) and ran sysprep, after to create the deployment image.

Also as i am just in the testing phase to discover feasibility, i never actually copied my image over to another machine as i hoped that letting it just go through the motions again, starting up would simulate the effect of having copied the image to a similiar machine.

Anyway the errors i recieved were on first boot OS failed to run due to a registry key not changed properly telling XP that the install hadn't finished properly, then after havingh sorted that out, rebooting again to discover about only 5 services were running and my machine was severly crippled.

If i'm wsting my time trying to sysprep a dell OEM then fair enough, but i could kiss someone, or not, who could give me succsessful step by steps as to how to do it.

Would it be fair to say that people who are succssessfully sysprepping are starting with either a volume licence product, or other such unadulterated media?

The other way i'm looking at it is as we've a lot of very similiar machines, i'm tempted to just clone the image then run something like the SID re-generator from the likes of sysinternals as hardware would be p[retty much identical everywhere anyway, shame though as i'm trying to do this as part of my MCSA course...

Thanks for any enlightenment anyone - greatly appreciated!

Squeak

[Directed]

I have an answer for this. I too have been using Sysprep without issues until recently. It appeared that a Windows Update broke Sysprep. After some trial and error I discovered that it was Media Player 11 that caused the issue. If you uninstall it you will then be able to use Sysprep again.