Sysprep Win XP SP3 issue

Hey,

As iv found out the hard way.. Renaming the local administrator account before running Sysprep will stop the process of copying the admin profile to the default user profile.. I haven't used Sysprep in years and was lucky I spotted this just before I was going to send the Image off to the factory :O kinda annoying!

Anyone aware of a quick way to stop this from happening? On our current image the admin account rename is done via an Altiris Script post syprep.. was hoping to cut this one out with my new image.

I would be interested to know why this happens however.. its still the local admin account??

Any tips would be appreciated

Thanks, Rev.

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Comments

blargoe

I assume you mean it's not working because you're scripting it and it doesn't like the new name? I've never scripted it but I always rename local admin when I build an image, and I never have issues doing it manually.

Does whatever script you use run under the context of the admin user? If so you could try using the %userprofile% variable, which will always resolve to the path of that user's profile.

Before the sysprep, the path to the Administrator profile will always be c:\documents and settings\administrator, and after it is generalized, it will always be c:\documents and settings\<whatever you renamed the user>.

Revenue

Thanks for the reply.

Sorry I do manually rename the Admin account. However if I do not rename this account before Sysprep the admin account profile will be copied to the default users profile and any user that logs in will get all the settings that I have setup in the admin profile.

However, if I rename the admin account before running sysprep I find that all the settings that I have configured are not copied to the default users profile. So later when a user logs in they do not get all the profile settings that I had set.

hmm so you had no issues with doing this? Must be doing something wrong :O

blargoe

When I do copy settings to default user, I just do it before sysprep. I don't do it that much anymore though.

So how exactly is the copy to the default profile executed, when it works correctly?

Revenue

I was under the impression that with Sysprep for SP2\SP3 the local administrator account is automatically copied to the default user profile when Sysprep is run. Is this incorrect? I have read quite a few documents that say this is the case.

blargoe

I don't think it does... certainly not all of it anyway. I don't get the same desktop icons, folder settings, etc when I log in with a different user after a sysprep.

Revenue

Arg.. found that MS changed the way that Syspreps works in SP3.. not that is easy to find. Spent the better part of the day on this.. Learnt a lot about user profiles though! Il let yas know if this works for me

Dave,

I was thrown off on this also. If you want to use your local Admin profile as the Default profile on sysprep images, just ensure you have the following in your sysprep.inf before you perform your Sysprep phase.

[Unattended]

UpdateServerProfiledirectory=1

Prior to SP2, you had to tweek your Default User profile.

With SP2, they switched to Local Admin as template for Default User.

With SP3 they reverted back to pre SP2 model.. spin the bottle and see where it lands {

Source : Windows XP SP3 SYSPrep : Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) : Windows XP IT Pro : Microsoft TechNet Forums

dynamik

I'll need to be doing some of this soon, so thanks for suffering through this, so I don't have to waste my time with it

Revenue

Yeah there was a few frustrated moments lol

.. Ah well, Thats IT. Learnt quite a bit from the experience so dont fee too bad now.

Ok Iv completed the Image, Adding UpdateServerProfileDirectory=1 to the [Unattended] section did the trick. Nice easy solution after hours of playing with permissions and Copying user profiles only to have sysprep wipe them out :O

Im still not 100% on the renaming of the local admin account however. I would be keen to know this for next time. All the documentation I found didn't even mention this as in issue.. although I found lots of people who said it doesn't work and a few who say it does..

Just because Im now behind the project deadline I kept the local admin as default and use an Altiris script to rename this when the PC is attached to the network. Will do for now I guess.

Thanks for the replys

blargoe

Informative, thanks for the update

Revenue

Update:

Just for anyone following this..

I have run into several issues with this Syprep (SP3). If was if I logged into the PC as an admin (local or domain) everything would appear to be normal. All my settings sticked and all looks well... when I login as a user (local or domain), at first everything would appear normal.. then I would open IE and find that the favorites and history is all screwed.

It would put a folder called "Links" on the desktop and wont let the user add or organize favorites. Clicking the history button would bring up the history, then clicking favorites would just show the history as well.

I thought this was to do with a permissions issue however I still cannot find the actual cause. All the folders\files in the Documents and Settings folder look ok to me. Even compared it to our current SOE and looks ok.

Iv now just made the changes under a general user account. Will copy this to the default profile then Sysprep again but deleting the UpdateServerProfiledirectory=1 line from the sysprep.inf file.

Fun.