Jump to content

Question About Win7 Sysprep


Recommended Posts

Hi Yall ,

I have been doing the whole windows 7 image building thing past couple of weeks now and am almost ready to go into production. I have completed my image and like what I got so far.. I have not rearmed office 2010 or win7 (set rearm to 0) yet .. I have tried deploying my image to a different model computer and I notice that it will not activate office or windows using my setupcomplete.cmd script.. It works fine after sysprep on the machine I built the image on .. does this have to do with the whole rearming thing? Like if I do what I mentioned above (rearming office and windows) will I still see this problem? My rearm count is currently set to 3 .. but after this image I will need to install another piece of specialty software on my reference image and deploy another golden image into production again.. hope this isn't too confusing..

Thanks !

Link to comment
Share on other sites


Hey not sure what u mean by SKU but I thought re-arming office 2010 and windows 7 was crucial before deploying an image? So the machine gets a unique CMID and grace period for activation is reset??

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never used rearm before since there wasn't a valid reason for it.

Are you generalizing your images? This is required for deployment, as it takes out the machine-specific data that can cause duplicate CMID error.

I see your SKU (presuming it is the same) you posted Windows 7 Enterprise in another thread. Are you using KMS for your activation?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey sorry for the late reply (been busy) .. anyways I am using the generalize switch when I run sysprep on my image.. We are not using KMS atm but we just set it up and it will be getting used soon enough.. I always thought I had to rearm windows AND office before I took my "Final Golden" Image.. I guess that's only necessary when I am using KMS exclusively? As of right now I am using MAK keys.. Thanks for the help. much appreciated

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you set SkipRearm to 1, you can sysprep as many times as you want. However, you need to set this to 0 (or remove it entirely) when you capture your final image. It can also cause other problems if it is left set to 1. Please see this TechNet blog post for details. Also of note in that post, is the section on using MDT for creating reference images. MDT can be downloaded here and more information on using MDT for you imaging needs can be found here.

Hope this helps,

David

Windows Outreach Team - IT Pro

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you set SkipRearm to 1, you can sysprep as many times as you want. However, you need to set this to 0 (or remove it entirely) when you capture your final image. It can also cause other problems if it is left set to 1. Please see this TechNet blog post for details. Also of note in that post, is the section on using MDT for creating reference images. MDT can be downloaded here and more information on using MDT for you imaging needs can be found here.

Hope this helps,

David

Windows Outreach Team - IT Pro

Hey thanks for the link (actually read that already) but gave it a read again and noticed that it mentions towards the end. That if you want to make changes to your image you can just revert back to your "reference Image" that has a rearm count of 3.. so when you update/change w.e to the reference image and you then sysprep using '0' you are therefore using sysprep with a '0' only once because you can always revert back to your reference image to make changes. Sounds confusing but basically I can rearm windows and office and not worry about every exceeding my count because my reference image will always have a count of 3 .. I think I'm gong to stick with rearming windows and office before my FINAL image just to be safe. It won't hurt none.. and I'm not so sure generalize rearms Windows AND Office (unless someone can actually confirm) .. as of yet I am unable to actually see a real CMID on any windows 7 machine using rearm /dlv or the ossp equivelant command..

Anyways thanks All

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe our approaches are different. For every final "gold" image I create, I also create a duplicate image that is in audit mode and save that too. This approach basically makes it so I don't ever have to go over the "2" syspreps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe our approaches are different. For every final "gold" image I create, I also create a duplicate image that is in audit mode and save that too. This approach basically makes it so I don't ever have to go over the "2" syspreps.

Which IS good practice.. I on the other hand just go back to my Reference Image If the image ever needs updating.. It not a widely deployed image only a dozen or more machines so as for updates it won't be that crazy.. since we have wsus and secunia csi in our environment.. All in All I've been doing desktop Imaging for a year now and I'm still learning.. I quite honestly hate doing it lol but its cool to get a universal image to be be deployed with almost no post work

Link to comment
Share on other sites

our solution is to not do any rearming on the "Master". We:

1) run a basic sysprep generalize

2) capture the image (and make a backup copy to another disk)

4) /mountrw the capture and drop a setupcomplete.cmd that has the rearm instructions.

This keeps the master clean, provides a backup if we need it, and rearms the targets.

Edited by iamtheky
Link to comment
Share on other sites

our solution is to not do any rearming on the "Master". We:

1) run a basic sysprep generalize

2) capture the image (and make a backup copy to another disk)

4) /mountrw the capture and drop a setupcomplete.cmd that has the rearm instructions.

This keeps the master clean, provides a backup if we need it, and rearms the targets.

That's a cool method of doing things.. I guess imagex only lets u do that to .wim images? I'm stuck using ghost.. although I can use ghost explorer and do something similar to your method its just seems like doing it the bootleg way idk..

Like I said my audience is small, if this was an image for thousands of machines I'd probably go a lil more indepth and setup a better system.. but truth is I got thrown into this 2 weeks ago and kinda had to relearn how to do desktop imaging with windows 7 allover again lol

Edited by justpooped
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...