How to sysprep a Windows 7 master
image more than 3 times
A common scenario for
Windows XP was to make a master image on a system, sysprep it, create the
image, and build on that master image for the next version of that image.
Windows 7 made this difficult as you can only sysprep (better said, re-arm the
license of) a system only 3 times.
Easiest way probably is
to use a Virtual Machine and snapshot it right before sysprep. That way you can
restore to right before the re-arm and build on that.
Alternatively, you can
use sysprep referencing an unattend.xml file with an entry telling sysprep to
skip the re-arm,
for example: sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize
/unattend:"c:\unattend.xml" /quit
This unattend.xml file
should contain at least the following:
<settings pass="generalize">
<component
name="Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP"
processorArchitecture="amd64"
publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral"
versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<SkipRearm>1</SkipRearm>
</component>
</settings>
Make sure to delete this
xml before the unattended setup runs during deployment because it might
interfere with the settings you inject during OSD.
Or, instead of using the
XML, set the skip re-arm in the image with the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform\SkipRearm.
Note that the image does not retain this value, it gets reset after doing the
sysprep.
Windows will skip the
re-arm, but during the OSD process you can run the re-activation which will
make the MAK or KMS key still unique to that device.
Oh no, I read this to late and already used my
3 times...
Don't worry, as mentioned
bove, Windows 7 out-of-the-box can re-arm only 3 times, but if accidentally
that happens to you, you can still recover the image and run the sysprep.
Running slmgr.vbs /dlv lets you check the re-arm counter. If it's 0
and you sysprep you will generally receive errors in the setupact.log and
setuperr.log files like these:
Error [0x0f0073]
SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:Not running DLLs; either the machine is in an invalid
state or we couldn’t update the recorded state, dwRet = 31
Error [0x0f0082]
SYSPRP LaunchDll: Failure occurred while executing
'C:\Windows\System32\slc.dll, SLReArmWindows', returned error code -1073425657
Error [0x0f0070]
SYSPRP RunExternalDlls: An error occurred while running registry sysprep DLLs,
halting sysprep execution. dwRet = -1073425657
Error [0x0f00a8] SYSPRP WinMain: Hit failure while processing
sysprep generalize providers; hr = 0xc004d307
To remedy this, do the
following
Open regedit and look
for:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\Status\SysprepStatus\CleanupState\
Set to value: 2
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\Status\SysprepStatus\GeneralizationState\
Set to value: 7
Than (this step isn't always
necessary but it's better to include it anyway in your procedure):
msdtc -uninstall (wait a few seconds)
msdtc -install (wait a few seconds)
Reboot the system.
Now you can run sysprep again, but, don't forget
to apply the things you learned in the first half of this document.
