Sign in
 
HomeLibraryWikiLearnGalleryDownloadsSupportForumsBlogs
Resources for IT Professionals >
> 
> 
> 
Sysprep limits and KMS

Answered Sysprep limits and KMS

  • Friday, January 04, 2013 9:38 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    We are running a MDT 2012 update 1 system and now, after 3 syspreps of the same image appear to have run into the sysprep limit. I know there are "better" ways to make images that don't run into this problem, but they are not an option for our setup here sadly. In my research though, I find stuff like this: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproinstall/thread/1a255b2f-9afa-4960-a8a4-f6b7b6b68564/

    which seems to indicate if you are running a KMS setup then one should not be hitting the sysprep limit. We are running a KMS setup and are hitting this limit. So my only conclusion is that my belief it is a limit of sysprep must be wrong? What kidn of logs are info would you guys need to help figure out what is going wrong?

    What is occuring is the latest build I sysprep'ed and captured went fine. When I go and deploy that image via MDT, it deploys correct in the PE but when it reaches windows, it sits at the login screen (where you press ctrl+alt+del). When you try and login manually, the administrator account has been locked out. You can re-enable it by going into safe mode, but my research indicated this was due to the sysprep limit. Even when I do unlock the account and get into windows, the PC is showing it has been activated correctly so the KMS server is still working then.

    Thanks!

     

All Replies

  • Friday, January 04, 2013 9:55 PM
     
     Answered
    Sign In to Vote
    1

    Try SkipRearm

    See here for more details - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff716063%28WS.10%29.aspx

    It seems like you already know this is a terrible idea and MDT makes it really easy to re-create images without re-sysprepping so I won't mention it :)

    • Marked As Answer by Comprox Saturday, January 05, 2013 10:23 PM
    •  
     
  • Friday, January 04, 2013 10:10 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    I found that as a potential solution but it also raised some questions:

    1. I should keep 2 images then. One where skiprearm is set to '1' and use this to update the image in the future. A second image where it is set to '0' for deployment as KMS does not play nice when the skiprearm is set to '1'.

    2. If I set the skiprearm to '1' and then deploy that image back out in 2 months to update it more, will it have not passed the 30 day window and not allow me to update it?

    The reason we have to do it this way is a good chunk of the software we need can not be deployed via any automated system. It's crappy software for a library that has to be installed and setup manually. Sadly, it updates somewhat often as well. Heck, one piece of the software just doesn't work even when you do use the silent install method and the devs of it have no clue why. Good fun. So, we need a way to have a master image that we can update every few months without having to re-make it from scratch (hopefully!).

     
  • Saturday, January 05, 2013 10:24 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0
    Just wanted to say that our KMS server was still able to activate windows even when skiprearm was set to '1' solving both of my extra questions above. Thanks!
     
  • Sunday, January 06, 2013 4:41 AM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Your symptom suggests that you run sysprep on a reference computer with windows rearm count reached 0. Sysprep failed and you captured that failed image.

    Activate your reference computer with KMS before you run sysprep. That resets rearm count to 1, which allows you to further sysprep your image one time.

    Run "slmgr –dlv" to make sure the rearm count is 1 before you sysprep and capture it.

    Regards.


    • Edited by Betty Wong Sunday, January 06, 2013 6:05 AM
    •  
     
  • Thursday, May 16, 2013 2:06 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    HI,

     My Reference PC in Workgroup and cannot activate with KMS?

    As

     
  • Thursday, May 16, 2013 2:45 PM
     
      Has Code
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Yes you can.

    cscript %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs -skms <kms srv ip here>
cscript %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs -ato
cscript %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs -ckms

    Then try out 'slmgr -dlv' to verify the rearm count.

    Regards.

     
  • Thursday, May 16, 2013 9:16 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    HI Betty,

      Do we need to activate the OS before the capture?

    AS