2 Strange Sysprep Issues

[davevandoramon]

Hi all,

I have some strange issues with sysprep so far:

1.) No matter where I put the "Product Key" in my Sysprep for my 2000
install, it ignores it. I've tried at the end, and with and without "
"'s. Still doesn't work, but the key IS valid.

2.) I have an XP sysprep on a large SATA RAID5 volume. I am using a
multiprocessor HAL as well as verfied it is loading the mass storage
drivers for the card. The Sysprep doesn't blue screen, but it is caught
in an endless loop in Mini-Setup. I have tried isolating drivers, but
that has not semed to work. The machine is an XW8200 HP workstation
running dual xeons, a 3ware SATA RAID5 card with 4 drives and XP SP2.

Any info that you have to offer is appreciated, thanks in advance. If
you need anything more from me, do not hesitate to ask.

 

[Adam Leinss]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in

Hi all,

I have some strange issues with sysprep so far:

1.) No matter where I put the "Product Key" in my Sysprep for my
2000 install, it ignores it. I've tried at the end, and with and
without " "'s. Still doesn't work, but the key IS valid.

Post your sysprep.inf here with the product key blanked out with X's.
Most likely it's syntax error.

2.) I have an XP sysprep on a large SATA RAID5 volume. I am using
a multiprocessor HAL as well as verfied it is loading the mass
storage drivers for the card. The Sysprep doesn't blue screen, but
it is caught in an endless loop in Mini-Setup. I have tried
isolating drivers, but that has not semed to work. The machine is
an XW8200 HP workstation running dual xeons, a 3ware SATA RAID5
card with 4 drives and XP SP2.

Is this your "reference machine" or are you trying the image from a
different machine? Usually, when you have all the drivers loaded on a
machine and you are using it as a "reference machine", the drivers are
usually not an issue with Sysprep as they "drop through" since you
already installed them in Windows. The issue of drivers usally comes
in when you make an image on one "reference machine" and move it to a
different piece of hardware.

Adam

 

[Guest]

I am unsure about your second issue, but for your first one, unless you have
a site licence, you should not use the product key during sysprep. Only after
you ghost to the other machine do you enter the product key.

(I hope this is what you are looking for and will hope)

 

[Johan Arwidmark]

The key should be in the [UserData] section.

Note: win2000 calls it ProductID while XP calls it ProductKey

Windows 2000

[UserData]
ComputerName = MYCOMPUTER
FullName = "Pat Coleman"
OrgName = "Woodgrove Bank"
ProductID="12345-ABCDE-12345-ABCDE-12345"

Windows XP

[UserData]
ComputerName = MYCOMPUTER
FullName = "Pat Coleman"
OrgName = "Woodgrove Bank"
ProductKey="12345-ABCDE-12345-ABCDE-12345"


Regarding the loop in minisetup, try adding the 883667 to the master
image before resealing it.

Windows XP Setup program may stop responding during video driver
installation
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/883667


regards

Johan Arwidmark
Microsoft MVP - Setup/Deployment

 

[ColdRain]

1) I'm not sure about the 2000 product key issue - it's been a long time
since I've done a 2000 sysprep install and I don't have an old sysprep.ini
lying around for reference sorry.

2) As for the XP sysprep issue - do you mean that you have the image file
stored on an SATA RAID5 volume (you mean on a network share somewhere)? What
imaging app. are you using? PQDI/GHO/ATI?

The reason I ask is that I came across a very strange issue when storing
PQDI images on SATA drives. If I imaged a machine with an image stored on an
SATA drive (even across the network) the resulting machine would continually
loop through mini setup. I never figured out why but I needed to move the
source image onto a PATA drive (even within the same server computer) for it
to work.

Just for the record I tried copying the image to another computer with an
SATA drive and when imaging from this different computer over the network,
the resulting computer had the same problem!

Try moving the source image onto a PATA drive.

 

[DaveVandorAmon]

I'm using ATI: Corporate Workstation. So far I've been unsuccessful in
using Ghost (haven't tried PQ) because ghost reports a negative
geometry of the RAID5 setup (it's 1.2TB RAID5 SATA using 4 400GB
drives.)

Johan, I do think it was because I had ProductKey instead of ProductID,
and I will try updating the RAID install with the 833667 and get back
to you.

Thanks for your support regarding these matters! I appreciate it.

 

[DaveVandorAmon]

Actually, the way I have it setup I am not even "imaging" and
"restoring" it yet. This happens when I perform the sysprep, then let
the machine shut down, and power it on to verify it runs and completes
the mini-setup as well as the full unattended installations from my
sysprep.inf. There will be another machine that this image will have to
work on, but I am taking it in steps to verify integrity and ensure
compatibility before I tackle porting the image to another platform.

 

[DaveVandorAmon]

Ok, changing it to ProductID worked fine. Still having the XP Sysprep
issue. Just to elaborate further, basically it "completes" mini-setup,
but at the "Computer Name" screen, since it's the only attended part of
our setup, once the unique computer name is selected, I.E.
Location/type/asset tag #, it goes to a black screen, reboots, then
displays the mfg startup splash screen. I'm not sure if this IS driver
related, because on all the other machines, none of the syspreps occur
this way. The only differences are we use PVR cards in these boxes, and
the RAID card. I've already removed the PVR cards, but it's still
happening. I did apply that hotfix, but that didn't work.

Thanks all!