Deployment Solution

I've tried three times to create the Win 7 Image however each time after the create image task is completed and the computer reboots, I get the sysprep error.

I've tried both Ghost and RDeploy.

I get the error shown in the image and if I restart the computer, the setup just fails.

Hi Geek786,

Are you using your own custom unattend file?  If so, I think some were seeing this issue if their admin password had non-usual characters.  I had this issue just when something wasn't perfect in the specialize part of my unattend.

Hi,

What is version of DS? Is it observed on X86 or X64? Are you using Custom Unattend file?

Thanks

I am using the MAK for Win 7 x64. I also tried to use the "Current Key" as well.

The MAK key is working fine with Windows 7 x32.

I use the custom unattend however I use that when I deploy the image.

DS 7.1

x86 is working fine with the custom unattend.

This happens only with x64

How are you doing a capture?  You're capture machine shouldn't know anything about your unattend file so not sure how that's getting in there.

Steps I did to capture

1) load OS, set a few basic settings, run win update

2) load symantec agent with desired plug ins (now is a good time to create a backup image in case the disk image capture doens't go well)

3) set up a capture disk image job which has 3 steps

 a) prepare for image capture - make sure you're pointing it to 64 bit version and using correct key and select reboot to pxe as part of prepare task

b) run create image (select disk image)

c) reboot to production

hope this helps?

First question - Do you have SP1 installed? I only had this problem prior to Service Pack 1. If you don't have that installed, install it ASAP! It fixes many problems. I've had other "unable to parse or process" errors since then, but they've all been because of custom answer files... if that's the case, those are relatively easy to fix. Post yer answer file, I'll try it in my environment, and we'll go from there.

Till step 3b, I am doing exactly as mentioned by you however the moment computer boots to production I get that error message.

I never mentioned anything about unattend files, I just replied to posts about that :)

I know its not used when creating the image and I am getting the error while creating an image.

Try Removing the key section from the custom xml.  It is not needed when using a MAK key.  If you want to use the key use the default install keys provided by Microsoft.  Open file product.ini in the (Windows Install DVD) sources\product.ini find the key of the product u have licenses and use it.  

Hi Dustin,

My issue is with the image creation. I might be wrong but is the answer file used for that as well?

This issue comes up when the image creation process completes and the computer restarts.

The image is captured and I can see the image but I can't use that image for deployment.

Looking at the error message, it's telling you that the failure is within the "Specialize" pass. Usually this pass is used for things like;

• Setting the computer name
• Joining the computer to a domain
• etc

One mistake I see a LOT here, is where people try to add their (or even DS) variables to the Unattend.XML file. In "ComputerName" for instance, you can ONLY have an asterisk ("*") for an auto-generated name, or a single specific name. If you have a hard-coded name, remember that you can't join this image to the domain - as you'll be breaking the domain membership of the previous computer. If you are trying to set a custom name here, remember to run a template XML file through the Altiris "ReplaceTokens" command, then you can use "%NAME%", or "%ID%", etc.

I've generally also found the "Scripted OS Install" method to be very troublesome, so I have actually generated my own scripts, custom XML using data-source token replacements, etc. You can read about my process (and see my XML file) in my blog: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/control-freaks-guide-windows-7-deployment-part-1

EDIT: Almost forgot. Remember that you can only SYSREP a computer three (3) times. If you intend to have a running build process with multiple staged images... you need to add the "SkipRearm" registry key to the system first. once you hit the limit of three, that image is sealed, dead, and unrecoverable. When starting with W7 I found this out the hard way and needed to rebuild my master image from scratch (after weeks of development and testing). This can cause strange issues as well - including the above error message. So just be aware of that.