Common Windows 7 and Server 2008 Imaging Issues

Products

• Deployment Solution

Issue/Introduction

Deployment Solution imaging tasks run against Windows 7/Windows 2008 Server nodes exhibit a high incidence of failures that require the assistance of Symantec Enterprise Support.  The following list is not comprehensive, but should provide a general overview of those components which may be involved or at fault in the case of imaging failure:

1. Sysprep does not run or Sysprep does not complete or a node is rendered inoperable after running Sysprep.
2. The presence of an OEM or "System Recovery" partition on the target node prevents RDeploy from capturing an image.
3. Customer environment uses Key Management Services (KMS) rather than a Volume License Key (VLK).
4. DeployAnywhere triggers mini-setup even when run independently of an imaging job.

Cause

Various Sysprep failures have been positively correlated with the following causes:

1. Activation clock has been reset 3 times (see Microsoft TechNet article How Sysprep Works for more information).

2. The IMAGE_STATE_COMPLETE flag is either not set, or is set as IMAGE_STATE_UNDEPLOYABLE {HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\State} (see Microsoft TechNet article Windows Setup Installation Process for more information)

3. The file unattend.xml is unable to be copied to the target node in order to run Sysprep in preparation for imaging.

4.  The unattend.xml answer file is corrupt or contains malformed data.

RDeploy does not support imaging Windows 7 systems with OEM and System Recovery partitions.

Resolution

Sysprep issues must be properly identified and handled individually; there is no universal workaround.

RDeploy errors caused by the existence of OEM/System Recovery partitions can be circumvented by using the Ghost imaging engine.

Symantec is currently working to identify and address DeployAnywhere issues with Windows 7.

Applies To
Windows 7 Enterprise

Windows 7 Professional

Windows 2008 Server

Windows 2008 R2 Server