Why sysprep

Our organisation like to have the admin account enabled and with a secure password in place. How would I stop sysprep doing this or should I simply re-enable later? Enabling the local administrator account is a big security risk. It is better to create a new account with admin rights. I've described how to enable the local administrator account before, if you really need it. Setting a local admin password makes sense. There are many tools out there which allow you to reset the password network wide.

When I make a image all I want to do when deplying is to change the computer name and the SID, after that I add it to the domain. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting. Receive new post notifications. Member Leaderboard — Month. Member Leaderboard — Year. Author Leaderboard — 30 Days. Author Leaderboard — Year.

Glad to see further development of WAC and I'm a fan of the concept. However, I would like to see Microsoft investment more resources into the product to speed up the cadence, replace functionality that still requires MMC and sort out the numerous bugs. My experience with was not great and it felt like a beta product at best.

New features include a multi-resource dashboard, the option to create VHDX, and an automatic logout. Vignesh Mudliar posted an update 8 hours, 24 minutes ago. Vignesh Mudliar posted an update 8 hours, 25 minutes ago.

Please ask IT administration questions in the forums. Any other messages are welcome. Receive news updates via email from this site. Toggle navigation. Author Recent Posts. Michael Pietroforte. Michael Pietroforte is the founder and editor in chief of 4sysops. Latest posts by Michael Pietroforte see all. Email Address. Mailing List. Related Articles.

If you're deploying an image to computers that have identical hardware and devices as the original PC, you can keep devices installed on the computer during system generalization by using an unattend file with Microsoft-Windows-PnpSysprep PersistAllDeviceInstalls set to true.

You can run Sysprep command up to times on a single Windows image. After running Sysprep times, you must recreate your Windows image. Refer the following table:. In previous versions of Windows, you could use the SkipRearm answer file setting to reset the Windows Product Activation clock when running Sysprep. If you are using a volume licensing key or a retail product key, you don't have to use SkipRearm because Windows is automatically activated. Installing new Microsoft Store apps or updating your existing Microsoft Store apps before generalizing a Windows image will cause Sysprep to fail.

Instead of using the Microsoft Store to update your apps, you should sideload updates to your line-of-business apps, provision offline-licensed Microsoft Store for Business apps for all users, or have end-users update their apps by using the Microsoft Store on their destination PCs.

If Microsoft Store access in a managed environment is disabled by an IT administrator, end-users will not be able to update the Microsoft Store apps. To generalize an image, you have to first boot into Audit Mode. Boot a PC into Audit Mode. You can choose to either close the System Preparation Tool window or allow it to remain open.

Customize Windows by adding drivers, changing settings, and installing programs. Don't install any Microsoft Store apps using the Microsoft Store. Other non Microsoft products such as Citrix do not work correctly on environments with duplidated SID. If a template, or system image is used, System administrators must run the Sysprep tool to clear the SID information.

The end result is a System template that functions as a new unique build every time it is deployed. In the example below we will be using Windows Server R2.