Windows Sysprep Guide

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This Guide will prepare your Windows devices to be captured and deployed with FileWave Network IVS.

Computer Imaging is an important part of Life Cycle Management. Creating and deploying Windows images requires running the System Preparation (Sysprep) tool. Sysprep removes system-specific data from Windows, ensuring a successful restoration of the image, and creates a "generalized" Windows installation that will then be ready for configuration at the next bootup.

If your organization requires an answer file, below is a step-by-step guide on creating an answer file for Sysprep to completely automate the Windows setup.

Creating a Sysprep unattended answer file

Tested on Windows 10 and 11

At this point, you can either

• Use a 3rd party creation tool
• Manually create the answer file
• Skip this and have no answer file or an empty answer file (not recommended)

It is highly recommended that generated answer files be used with matching Windows releases, e.g, 21H2 answer file with Windows 11 21H2, etc.  

Answer File Generator

Tested on Windows 10 1909 and 2004

• 3rd Party Answer File Generator (AFG) tool: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/ 

3rd Party Tool

The following are example links to online tools that will generate the XML:

• Win 10/11 MBR - http://windowsafg.com/win10x86_x64.html
• Win 10/11 UEFI - https://www.windowsafg.com/win10x86_x64_uefi.html 
  • Customers have reported unsuccessful image deployment of Windows 10 2004 from this tool

Manually

Installing the Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows

First we'll need to install the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Win AIK) on your technician machine. Follow the on screen prompts for your Windows AIK version.

• Win 10/11 - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/windows-assessment-deployment-kit

Check Disk

Run the Check Disk command before your Sysprep the image. This will ensure the disk is cleared of any errors. The below commands are run in Command Prompt run as administrator.  

chkdsk /R 
shutdown -r -t 0

Use a administrator command prompt to run the commands and reboot

System Prepare with Sysprep

Once Check Disk (chkdsk) has completed and the machine is back in Windows, run the command below (if you have no unattend XML file you may use the second command) with Command Prompt as administrator to Sysprep your machine:

C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:PATH TO SYSPREP ANSWER FILE XML
or
C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown

Sysyprep will prepare the machine to be copied and shutdown. You are now ready to upload your Master Image to the FileWave Imaging Appliance.

To continue this workflow and capture this as a Master Image see: Windows Network Imaging - PXE Booting