I've got a bunch of new Dell Dimension 1100 PC's that I'm working over for a Customer. This means booting one of the PC's, removing all the garbage software that Dell has installed, and "re-sealing" the installation with the Microsoft System Preparation Tool (Sysprep). Then I can use ntfsclone from the Linux-NTFS project to clone the disk to an image file, and throw it all on a bootable DVD.
I got up to the last bit, and tried to run Sysprep but kept receiving the following error:
Zow! That's helpful... Incompatible, eh... Can't continue, either. Great. I'll just tell my Customer... Wait! I could have a look at the source and see why it-- oh, wait. Never mind. *sigh*
I knew I was using the right version of Sysprep (the one for Windows XP Service Pack 2), and I knew that Dell used the same tool (because I was using the copy they left on the hard disk drive) with success. Digging around w/ Gooogle, I came up with this entry from Mark Wilson's blog, titled SysPrep fails on a Windows XP SP2 installation without file and printer sharing enabled. That entry, in turn, refers to a message board posting from two-thousand and goddamned four about this problem.
Jackpot!
So, basically, do a net start server prior to running Sysprep and all will be well. I tried it, and it worked fine.
I continue to be completely baffled at how this kind of practice of grubbing around for bits of undocumented or poorly documented knowledge, the "state of the art" in the IT industry, is tolerated by anyone. Over two years with the problem, and Microsoft hasn't published a k-base article about it. The docs for Sysprep don't mention the behaviour, so I'm not sure how you're really supposed to figure it out. It's completely indefensible to me. If Microsoft can't let me see the source code to their products to solve problems on my own, the least they could do is decently document the product's behaviour.
Hopefully at least one person will either be helped by this posting, or, at the very least, it'll help the PageRank on Mark Wilson's blog entry.
