Forgot to sysprep image, how to remove SID: Win XP

SouperComputer

Any idea how to remove/reset the SID on an image that you have forgotten to sysprep before imaging?

Capt'n Midnight

Doesn't sysprep remove the SID ?

or use NewSID on sysinternals

SouperComputer

aye, sysprep does remove it, but I didnt sysprep before I made the image. So it wont boot fully, and windows repair does not fix it.

ill try systernals though. Maybe hrough ERD commander I can mount the registry and run sysprep from there????

Capt'n Midnight

If it's inaccessable boot device 07? then you could be very lucky and might be as simple as being on a different partition (eg: Dells have a diags partition so C: is actually the second partition not the first) by editing the boot.ini file, but if the PC's are different then it's probably getting it's knickers in a twist about the HW differences and it's game over (if it's two desktops that are nearly the same you could try sticking a PCI-PCMCIA adaptor in it - but that's straw clutching)

Other option I must try sometime is a very basic sysprep image into a c:\winxp folder. Then use it to restore an NtBackup image. (the nice thing about NtBackup is you can run it on a live machine without affecting the donor PC)

SouperComputer

it boot fine and gets stuck on the "welcome to windows" screen. Had the same problem before and removing the SID solved it. Havnt had a chance to try those other things, but ill post back as soon as I find out what the dealio is.

Capt'n Midnight

Ahhh sounds familiar now - /me racks brain to remember that fix

SouperComputer

jeeze if you dont know im fecked, I owe you a tray of beer at this stage!

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.joshie.com/~jlevitsk/blog/archives/000030.html Sysprep tips.

Key elements of cross-hardware platform compatibility:

Before saving your image, change the hard drive controller to "Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller" (or something like that, I may not have stated it 100% correctly but you'll find it). Afer installing the image on a target computer, change the HDC to the correct one for that platform (can be scripted using the MS devcon tool).

Set Sysprep to run a hardware detection at startup (sysprep.exe -pnp -mini -reseal -quiet).

For the GX260 and GX270 you'll have to download the chipset drivers and extract them with the -a switch, then put them in a location in your image and tell Sysprep to look for them there (OemPnPDriversPath="\Drivers\GX260;\Drivers\GX270") where "drivers" is a folder off the root of C:.

When creating your image, disable the sound card (onboard) or remove it (add-in) during image creation on your master computer.

For profiles:

Install all programs under the same user name when creating the image. Set up desktop icons, Internet Explorer settings, everything you want to be customized, under that profile. Before saving the image, copy that profile on top of the Administrator profile, then delete the profile you used to create the image (you can't copy to/from or delete a profile that's in use, so you'll need a third user ID to do this). After your image is deployed to a target computer, use the Administrator profile to over-write the Default User profile. This is the only method I've found to have a customized profile survive Sysprep.

To have sysprep join your domain:

[Identification]
DomainAdmin=
DomainAdminPassword=
JoinDomain=

In the above, you must use a username that is a domain user name (i.e., not a local account) and that has admin rights on the computer.

I've got this down to an art, there's probably more stuff I could put here. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Still can't find that file that was hanging system after cloning - delete pagefile too.

Capt'n Midnight

MUP.SYS can cause startup problems
http://www.computing.net/windows2000/wwwboard/forum/41160.html
http://www.earthv.com/tips_detail.asp?TipID=63