I am trying to move towards better Sysprep and image management practices, and I am trying to get me and my time to use Audit Mode when modifying the images to get rid of some nasty image problems I discovered after getting started here. However, I cannot find any info if Audit Mode has an expiry period. When I run slmgr.vbs it looks like it is licensed for good, theoretically (that is until I generalize again). I have tried to find something official, but I cannot. Can someone tell me if you run it for too long, will it eventually bomb out? I wanted to keep a reference computer running forever and fork off prepped images every period (like a month or quarter) to make things run more smoothly.
Audit mode does not expire. You will continue to reboot into audit mode until you change the mode. The expiration problem occurs if you have not activated yet (and after generalization). If you are looking to improve your image management process, you should look at the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). Using MDT you can have one base image for all hardware types, and you add drivers and updates into MDT to be applied automatically during installation. You can also add software packages to be installed at the same time. This article talks about sysprep and then compares that with using MDT. The MDT home page is here