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Registry edit to sysprep/generalize more than 3 times.

I'm sure that many of us have encountered this message when running sysprep /generalize "A fatal error occurred while trying to Sysprep the machine."

"But what does it mean?" you may ask... Microsoft's official word is that there is a limit of 3 rearms, poof, that's it. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929828) note where it says "To resolve this issue, you must rebuild the Windows image." - not the way I want to spend my weekend! You can append the skiprearm tag to your unattend.xml file, or you can just lift the limit as described below.

For Windows 7, find this key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform\SkipRearm

and change the value to 1. This will allow you to keep running sysprep /generalize. Also of note, you need to do this *each time* as it's not a persistent setting.

Posted 12 years ago 66839 views

Comments

  • Anytime I update an image I push it out while it is still in audit mode. That way if I need to redo something I just pull it back down. Another thing that works quite well is using a Hypervisor such as vmware esxi free edition or hyper-v then you can take snapshots and revert if need be. The later is the quickest option to revert the former helps for keeping a backup of the system in audit mode. - PhillipR 9 years ago
  • Actually there is a better way. You can incorporate the skiprearm into your unattend.xml file. That way you never have to remember to modify the registry.

    <settings pass="generalize">
    <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <SkipRearm>1</SkipRearm>
    </component>
    </settings> - ckantack 9 years ago
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