Windows XP Sysprep Issue

[Infinitarchitect]

We use Norton Ghost along with sysprep to rollout Windows XP images on our laptops. Just recently our image is starting to prompt for the product key for Windows XP. I've checked the sysprep.inf file and under userdata it has the product key in there. We haven't made any changes to the image, has anyone experienced this problem. What could be going on? The version of ghost we are using is Corporate edition 7.5. And we're using sysprep 2.0.

 

[linney]

Anything here?

You are prompted for the product key while the Windows XP Setup program is running, although you use an answer file that contains a product key

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;837494&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[brotayo]

I can't say truly what the problem is but I can tell you how we use sysprep at my job and maybe this will help.

All of the images that we make, we sysprep them in factory mode and then send the image to the ghost server. When the image is pushed out to PC's and loads the sysprep program will automatically load again. When this comes up we opt to not recreate the SID's and to use the mini-setup. Then click reseal to prepare the computer for the end-user. If you do not reseal the machine you find that you have problems with usb devices automatically loading. The mini-setup is the key because it forces the system to use the answer file that has been created and won't ask for the cd key because it is already entered.

 

[Infinitarchitect]

Yeah brotayo that's how we use sysprep as well, the mini-setup wizard for sysprep is not loading at all after we've ghosting a system for the end user now. All of our images on sitting on the server and nothing was modified. It only seems to be happening to one of our laptop images. I checked the sysprep.inf file and it all looks correct. Do you think we need to re-build this image including the sysprep setup?

 

[linney]

Carey Frisch [MVP] has some thoughts on the matter here.

http://www.mcse.ms/archive65-2004-9-1104953.html

 

[Infinitarchitect]

Thanks for the link, but we do have VL Licenses, and we've been using Ghost for a while without any problems, we just recently (4 months ago) started using sysprep instead of Ghost Walker to delete the SID and make the setup easier with the sysprep mini-wizard. We have over a 1000 machines here, only one of the images seems to be having trouble and that's on an IBM laptop. It's got to be sysprep. I'll continue to investigate, thanks everybody for the tips!