first of all, i want to say how much i appreciate everyone's help!!! thank you all!!! i've written a new unattend file, named it autounattend.xml i pointed my image to it and after imaging, this is what i get.... windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file for pass [specialize]. The settings specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft Windows Shell Setup]. not sure what in the specialize pass is causing this????