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SYSPREP fails

Question
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When i try to sysprep my machine(Defualt location for WINDOWS 7) I get an error message "A fatal error occured while trying to sysprep the machine." I need help to fix this problem??????????
- Edited by Ronnie VernonMVP, Moderator Sunday, January 18, 2009 8:30 PM ad remove
- Changed type Mark L. FergusonModerator Wednesday, February 18, 2009 4:53 PM
- Changed type Ronnie VernonMVP, Moderator Monday, May 11, 2009 7:09 PM Requested
- Changed type Mark L. FergusonModerator Monday, May 11, 2009 7:09 PM fix found
Answers
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Check the log in the sysprep folder. I had the same error message recently. The log indicated failure when sysprep encountered drmv2clt.dll This is a Digital Rights Management dll. Look for a Windows Media Player process and kill this before trying sysprep. In my case it was wmpnetwk.exe that was running.
- Marked as answer by Mark L. FergusonModerator Monday, May 11, 2009 7:10 PM
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Since your question or comment has gone unanswered for so long, you can send a report on your experience to the development team in this thread.
Have Comments about Windows 7 BetaRating posts helps other usersMark L. Ferguson MS-MVP -
Check the log in the sysprep folder. I had the same error message recently. The log indicated failure when sysprep encountered drmv2clt.dll This is a Digital Rights Management dll. Look for a Windows Media Player process and kill this before trying sysprep. In my case it was wmpnetwk.exe that was running.
- Marked as answer by Mark L. FergusonModerator Monday, May 11, 2009 7:10 PM
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Are you using the built-in SYSPREP or one that you are used to using with XP/2003? Navigate to c:\windows\system32\sysprep on the Windows 7 machine and run that one. If you have already done that, please accept my apologies and disregard.
From my present location, I cannot see your image due to firewall restrictions.
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I am having the same issue when trying to sysprep a machine using Windows 7 beta. TS99's suggestion was spot on. I had to kill the wmpnetwk.exe process, after that the sysprep completed successfully.
- Proposed as answer by Eworthington Monday, July 23, 2012 8:03 AM
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Win07 didn't specify what the error was. Another error that can potentially come up is: Error [0x0f0082] SYSPRP LaunchDll:Failure occurred
while executing 'C:\Windows\System32\slc.dll,SLReArmWindows', returned error code -2147023834
I thought it might have to do with not having activated the license. But I'm still get the error after activation. I read also that uninstalling the sound driver could fix this. It didn't. Any input? -
Okay, I did ts99's fix but it seems to have opened a new issue.
If I reboot a recently sysprep windows 7 image after that fix, it tends to go to a black screen after the post with only mouse movement. It never gets to windows. Any ideas on that? Video driver or part of a sysprep problem?- Proposed as answer by butterfly819 Saturday, February 23, 2013 6:21 AM
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I can also confirm this issue still exists in the RC (build 7100).If Windows Media Player Networking Sharing isn't important to you, instead of racing to start sysprep before wmpnetwk restarts, you can stop and disable the service [named: Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service].
- Proposed as answer by Scoopeloo Thursday, June 25, 2009 7:56 PM
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Don't forget to mention that this service will be disabled in the sysprepped image. I don't know if that's the idea, but it should be easy enough to put a batch file in your image to re-enable the service after sysprepping. Shouldn't that be a fix that MS could implement just as easy? Sounds as easy as:
function pre_sysprep() {
if (service_running)
{
stop_service();
create_batch_for_after_sysprep();
}
}
Etc ;-) -
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For some reason, even disabling the windows media player network sharing service in msconfig still isnt working for me. I have double checked the services or processes running at the time of the sysprep attempt, and nothing from windows media player seemed to be running. The same fatal error just keeps coming up. I checked the error log in the sysprep folder, and it seemed to focus on the .dll issue that was discussed earlier. Also noteworthy, I have Windows 7 Pro. Any ideas?
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All of your suggestions didnt work in my case. I happened to look in the event viewer and saw that the MSDTC failed to start. I ran the following from the cmd prompt running it as administrator:
net stop msdtc
result of that was that it was not running.
net start msdtc
result of this was failure to start. (the following was what the event viewer showed: some of the files may be missing, or corrupt. running msdtc -uninstall, then msdtc -install will fix the problem.) I did just what the event viewer said to do.
From the command prompt:
msdtc -uninstall
msdtc -install
net start msdtc
result started successfully.
From the path: c:\windows\system32\sysprep\ sysprep /generalize
sysprep started working and successfully syspreped my machine.
I wanted to add my discovery in case others never found a solution where the "wmpnetwk.exe " running was not the issue for them. -
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Hi guys
I just want to add that I have tried the commands above, but I'm still having the same problems.
I'm still getting the error message:
"System Preparation Tool 3.14
A fatal error occurred while tryin to sysprep the machine."
Any other suggestions?
Thank you- Proposed as answer by noodles164 Tuesday, May 11, 2010 1:48 AM
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I had the same issue performing the sysprep and didn't have the processes running in the task manager. After reviewing and following up with the forum I decided to stop the services for the Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service.
Go to Start and type services.msc find the service mention above double click or right click and select stop.
The sysprep ran without any issues.
Thanks for everyone's contribution that let me to this resolution. Hope this helps.
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I can't beleive we are all experiencing these issues?
I have mixed success. Each time Sysprep fails, I have to investigate the cause andf then try again. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. Is this what we have come to after all these years from Win3.1 to Windows 7?
Come on Microsoft, this really is rediculous................I thought these systems were supposed to be improvements. I have lost count of the hours I have lost trying to troubleshoot these various issues. Each time it goes wrong, I start again.
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We had a bunch of Dell Optima GX270's that work fairly well with Windows 7 32 Bit. We were unable to get sysprep to work on this hardware, even if we only loaded the OS and no other software (we made sure the Windows Media Player Network Service was stopped). We kept getting "A fatal error occurred....." message. So in addition to some software causing Sysprep failures, there are some hardware configs that won't work either.
We finally gave up trying to Sysprep the hardware directly. We instead built an image from a Hyper-V virtual machine. We then added the Dell drivers to our Windows Deployment Service server and pushed it to our Dell PCs. So far, we have no problems.
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Agreed! We spent over 60 manhours on the weekend trying to make sysprep, unattend.xml (another huge pain) and imagex work. Still no success or very spotty success. No problem, we just had to delay our rollout. This is ridiculous.
BTW, media player is not an issue, I tried the MSDTC thing, we have the latest patched version of Win 7 Enterprise on brand new business-grade hardware.
Sysprep was running but failed after a few minutes and now fails immediately with the Rearm problem. It seems there is a problem with internal providers and external providers, whatever they might be. Here's the log:
2010-11-15 11:10:56, Error [0x0f0082] SYSPRP LaunchDll:Failure occurred while executing 'C:\Windows\System32\slc.dll,SLReArmWindows', returned error code -1073425657
2010-11-15 11:10:56, Error [0x0f0070] SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:An error occurred while running registry sysprep DLLs, halting sysprep execution. dwRet = -1073425657
2010-11-15 11:10:56, Error [0x0f00a8] SYSPRP WinMain:Hit failure while processing sysprep generalize internal providers; hr = 0xc004d307
2010-11-15 11:11:21, Error [0x0f0073] SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:Not running DLLs; either the machine is in an invalid state or we couldn't update the recorded state, dwRet = 31
2010-11-15 11:11:21, Error [0x0f00ae] SYSPRP WinMain:Hit failure while processing sysprep cleanup external providers; hr = 0x8007001fAny ideas gratefully received. Even more grateful if MS would fix this.
Alan MacKenzie asmac@hotmail.com -
Our sysprep worked months ago and quit working we have been using
http://blog.brianleejackson.com/sysprep-a-windows-7-machine-%E2%80%93-start-to-finish-v2
and did not have any problems till now.
We run win7 enterprise (32bit and 64bit) (currently working with 32bit for this writing) with Symantec Enpoint Protection on Dell optiplex PC's (520,620,745,755,780,960,980, etc..) Using Symantec Ghost to deploy...
Tried from scratch, clean load, everything would fail after syspreping (Installed all updates and some basic programs)
"Windows could not finish configuring the system. To attempt to resume configuration, restart the computer."
Hotfix http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981542/en-us resolved the issue, had to find the 32bit version at alternate site since MS doesn't post 32bit version there... http://thehotfixshare.net/board/index.php?showtopic=14375 - Used for testing only... (Waiting for MS to respond to get patch from them)
Must be a update/patch causing this problem... I did install Windows live when it was failing.... Have windows live now and it works with patch. No issues with wmpnetwk.exe or antivirus. No Daemon tools installed.
Prompts for computer name during sysprep, joins domain, fully patched, ready to roll... Just need to work on deploying drivers depending on the model
BACK IN BUSINESS FINALLY!
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Check the log in the sysprep folder. I had the same error message recently. The log indicated failure when sysprep encountered drmv2clt.dll This is a Digital Rights Management dll. Look for a Windows Media Player process and kill this before trying sysprep. In my case it was wmpnetwk.exe that was running.
Worked like a charm for me. THanks -
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Another item to consider is how many times sysprep has been run on the same image using the /generalize flag. If it has been run more than three times you will need to rebuild your image from installation media per this kb.
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This problem still appears on new Windows 7 PCs with SP1 integrated.
I closed all the processes to do with Windows Media Player and Sysprep worked flawlessly
Thom McKiernan (UK) @thommck | thommck.wordpress.com | MCSA | MCTS- Proposed as answer by Netauto Wednesday, June 15, 2011 3:04 PM
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Hi
This isue is in the UIU (Universal Imaging Utility) 4.6.2 in the last sec when the UIU have runned, the error SYSPREP 7 Error U050001 / 3.14
And then i have to from the top...
But the trick to kill the prosess mwpnetwk.exe does the trick..
Thanks....
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Hi guys,
I have also a huge problem running sysprep. I get the Fatal error 3.14.
Think it has to do with the fact that one can only run three times sysprep on a machine.
There is no mediaplayer process running, tried te mstdc -uninstall and install routine, everything without success so far.Is there anyone who got passed the max number of running sysprep??
Or is the only option left to rebuild the installation? And if so, how do I prevent this from happening again? In other words, how to reset the counter for sysprep runs?Really hope that someone has an answer for this rediculous MS thing.
Cheers, Hans
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Is there anyone who got passed the max number of running sysprep??
Or is the only option left to rebuild the installation? And if so, how do I prevent this from happening again? In other words, how to reset the counter for sysprep runs?
Using the sysprep /generalize command will reset Windows to the original licensing state. This can be done only three times per Microsoft Licensing rules. In our environment, we make a copy of the image before we generalize it for deployment in order to add new programs or patches and not hit the limits. Refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929828 and the links within for more information. -
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Soltion for the above issue is,
GO to Sysprerp folder i.e. c:\windows\system32\sysprep\Partner 7 clean partner folder... Check below guide ..
http://www.vmwareandme.com/2013/10/solution-windows-8-and-windows-81-fatal.html
http://www.vmwareandme.com/2013/10/guide-fatal-error-occurred-while-trying_23.html
www.mytricks.in
- Edited by Santosh Suryawanshi Monday, October 28, 2013 5:12 AM
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ran into the same issue with systemprep error and had to locate the wmpnetwk.exe file to kill it before proceeding. If you need to find the file you would click task manager and then go to processes and you should beable to kill the program like that once you kill it, it will sign you out and restart the computer and finish the installation process after that. Good luck
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Bump for the sole fact we bought an Acer refurbished computer (Win 7 Home premium, Acer AMD quad-core AM3407G UW10p) and out of the box it gave me the error message "A fatal error occured while trying to sysprep the machine."
Really? Out of the box?
The computer would not perform it's first initialization/startup. It connected to the network/Internet, but none of the programs fully worked.
Thankfully I found this post and pulled up task manager and killed Windows Media Player (wmpnetwk.exe).
Computer completed its initial setup and seems to be working fine.
Thanks for the fix!
For search engine/tagging purposes:
Acer refurbished "A fatal error occured while trying to sysprep the machine."
Acer
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Open command prompt
type or copy and paste this: net stop wmpnetworksvc & sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown
This stops the Windows media player network service (the service causing this error) right before running sysprep. Note: you can also restart the machine and run sysprep immediately since it takes a few minutes usually for the WMP network service to start up.
if you have unattend.xml file as well then assuming it is in C:\files:
net stop wmpnetworksvc & sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:c:\files\unattend.xml
- Edited by Nuclear Onion Monday, December 31, 2012 2:34 PM
- Proposed as answer by bobodread Monday, February 4, 2013 9:31 AM
- Unproposed as answer by bobodread Monday, February 4, 2013 9:31 AM
- Proposed as answer by neoTech123 Sunday, July 7, 2013 2:34 AM
- Unproposed as answer by neoTech123 Sunday, July 7, 2013 2:34 AM
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Ok I had this problem with a Dell OptiPlex 9010 that I am currently rolling out. I tried all the solutions above (and a few more I'd happened upon during my travels trying to resolve this issue).
Ultimately the cause was the BIOS being set to UEFI. I expect this will cause a number of problems with new equipment deployments. At any rate the system WOULD NOT Sysprep without changing the BIOS boot sequence from UEFI to Legacy.
Hope this helps others in a similar situation.
- Edited by bobodread Monday, February 4, 2013 9:36 AM
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This is what happens when you receive ""A fatal error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine." :
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Stop the service "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service" solve the pbs for me.
- Proposed as answer by SrdjanManas Thursday, March 5, 2015 11:05 AM
- Unproposed as answer by SrdjanManas Thursday, March 5, 2015 11:05 AM
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If you have this in log file
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\iesysprep.dll[gle=0x000000c1]
the problem is in IE10 and probably IE11 (beautiful peace of software). Solution from MS is
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2868126 if you have enough time to waste searching reg...
Or, just uninstall IE and do the sysprep.
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I have been sysprepping machines for years and if sysprep fails, the only alternative that I could ever see was to rebuild the machine. But, I have seen in posts like yours, that you are able to get into the machine to get the logs files. I have never been able to get back into a machine once sysprep fails, so I am a bit confused. It is not my favorite thing to do the same installs over and over again, so please please tell me how you get back into a machine in which you receive a fatal error.
Thank you for any light you can shed.
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For those who are having trouble running sysprep with the SLReArmWindows message in the error log, this is what I did to fix the issue.
First, verify the system has been rearmed too many times. From an elevated command prompt (start -> cmd (right click, select run as Administrator), typeslmgr -rearm
If it says the maximum time has been reached, Start regedit and go to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform\
Change SkipRearm from 0 to 1.
From the elevated command prompt:slmgr -rearm
msdtc -uninstall
msdtc -install
Restart the PC.
Start regedit, navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform\
Change SkipRearm from 0 to 1 again.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\Status\SysprepStatus CleanupState to 2 and GeneralizationState to 7
Then run sysprep again. See if that works.
Spork Schivago
- Edited by Spork_Schivago Friday, March 4, 2016 8:15 PM
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