Sysprep deployment does not ask for product key

[Guest]

We setup a pc and ran sysprep with the reseal option. We then used ghost to
deploy the image to 20 pcs. When the pcs restarted they did not ask for the
product key, and also did not ask to activate. I was initially afraid that
they may have duplicate sids, but I used the ntsdsutil to check for duplicate
sids on the domain, and none were found. Did I use the incorrect parameter
with sysprep? Should this cause any problems?

 

[Guest]

It sounds like you specified sysprep to not restart the activation countdown
and that you provided it with a product key that sysprep applied to all
systems. This shouldn't be a big deal as long as you have the licensing
documentation to prove that you own the licences for those installations
regardless of which product keys the systems received. As long as you picked
reseal, sysprep should have removed the security information correctly. I
have also seen instances when machines boot that do have identical SIDs.
Windows provides a dialog telling you that there was a SIDs collision (or
something to that effect). If this does happen remove the computer from the
domain into a workgroup, remove it from the network, sysprep it again, and
ensure that you choose reseal to regenerate the SID during mini-setup.

However I did discover that if you use Ghost (or similar products) for
duplication, you should not tell the duplication software to apply your image
to the entire disk. Instead, specify ExtendOEMPartition=1 in sysprep.inf and
tell the duplication software to only create a partition big enough to apply
the image. Mini-setup will extend the partition on its own when the system
runs for the first time and modify the MFT accordingly. Apparently this is
the perferred method of applying images using disk duplication software, as
it better guarantees the stability of the file system based on the geometry
of the disk receiving the image.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;240126