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jdm
Asked: 2020-07-11 02:56:04 +0800 CST

Answer file for clonable windows installation

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I would like to create a windows image that can be cloned to multiple different computers, with different (known) hardware. And I would like Windows to resize the partitions after cloning. I read that you should "sysprep /generalize" from audit mode before cloning an image.

Now my question is, can I just install windows normally and interrupt the installation before the specialize step, in order to make a copy? Or do I have to let it proceed into OOBE, then enter audit mode, and then generalize manually? Whats the simplest scheme to achive this?

Things that are confusing me:

  • Can I do everything from one answer file, or do I have to create separate autounattend.xml and unattend.xml like in this tutorial? How do I chain them then?
  • There is <Generalize ForceShutDownNow="true" Mode="OOBE" /> which seems to let me interrupt the installation, but it only goes in the 5 auditSystem block. So that means I will go twice through generalize? I want to use ExtendOSPartition, which only makes sense in 4 specialize (after cloning)... But if I go twice though generalize, then I need to run this only the second time (unattend.xml)... but to achive this I'd have to go through audit mode and call sysprep manually.
windows-10 sysprep answer-file

1 Answers

  1. If you instructs Windows Setup to switch to Audit Mode (OOBE pass in autounattend.xml), the system will automatically copy autounattend.xml to C:\Windows\Panther and rename it to unattend.xml which will be used as answer file for Sysprep, which eventually cause issues. Hence, we should have separate autounattend.xml and unattend.xml.

    The procedure:

    a. We enable Pass 7 OOBE> Reseal> Audit. Seeing this part, Windows will jump to Pass 5 "auditSystem" and Pass 6 "auditUser".

    b. In auditUser pass, you can run your customization scripts and let the last script to run sysprep using your specified unattend.xml (which includes the ExtendOSPartition tag), i.e.: sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:c:\windows\system32\sysprep\unattend.xml

    A more detailed and advanced guide can be found at: https://rzander.azurewebsites.net/modern-os-deployment-mosd/

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