Alright, I've been battling a problem trying to image 10 machines with Vista. I've outlined my original problems here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&...st&p=779963

Out of the 10, I am left with three that won't reboot after the image is deployed. This has changed and is not an imaging question anymore, but I am not sure if it is hardware or software atm. What happens, after deployment, and restarted, it POSTs, then shows the black "Windows is preparing to start for the first time" screen, then goes to a black screen with an arrow, then goes to the loading screen (blue/green wallpaper) that says please wait in white with the "donut" spinning around.

On these 3 machines, it will sit at that screen for as long as I decide to let it. The load is thus broken, as doing a restart at that point results in the "Windows was improperly restarted, click ok to restart and reinstall Windows" message.

I've tried everything to determine what the problem could be. These machines contain a motherboard (q35jo), 4x 1GB RAM, 2 hard drives, a sound card and a video card in them. I've attempted the following:

1 - reimage using a different network port (different cable to different port on switch but same NIC)
2 - remove 2GB RAM and use remaining in dual channel mode.
3 - run memtest v3.3 and v3.4c (PASSED both)
4 - run a CPU tester* (PASSED)
5 - run WD Tools (PASSED full and quick tests)

So at this point I can't figure out where the problem is. None in the network, passed all diagnostics, but won't load up the the Vista welcome screen.

And before you say it, the image does not have the sound card software or driver installed.

Any ideas?

* cpu tester is a 32bit app I ran from the PE off the ramdrive.

Have you been able to successfully load Vista SP1 from original media? Hard to say without knowing if it does the same thing after Vista images from the DVD are copied down and the same steps are run after that.

Yes. It just seems like the Windows Welcome process is hanging. Also, I had previously attempted creating the master image on one of these machines, and that image was blowing up when I tried to deploy it. I just know there must be a hardware issue, I just can't find it.

All 10 are identical hardware, and only 3 have the issue?

Is there a difference in the BIOS configuration at all?
AHCI, power settings, USB legacy support through hw or OS, PnP-aware OS enabled, etc.
(Try a reset to Safe Settings on one of the clients, maybe.)

Yes they all have the same hardware, same BIOS version. Before imaging (the first time) we go into the BIOS and set to optimal defaults. Then change only the following:

- date
- time
- set primary display adapter to PEG
- disable onboard audio
- set resume on power loss to last state

All three work properly if I manually load with the CD.

I'm going to make another attempt today to see if I can't figure it out.

Does sysprep/windows welcome make a log file during the boot process that I can check once it stalls? I can use NTFSDOS to view anything on the C drive if needed.

OK rite now this shall be filed under phantom resolution. The three are working now after I reimaged them for the 4th time... Or at least they boot into Windows...