Sysprep Windows 2008 R2

Just wasted a day of my time troubleshooting an issue that was tracked back to being an issue with the Sysprep image of Windows Server 2008 R2 that I was using…

 

Basically it hadn’t been sysprep’d in the correct manner…

 

The issue I was seeing was the inability to add a domain user to a local group on a member server, the account would resolve OK but the user was not properly added.

I also received an error running the SharePoint 2010 config wizard:

 

An exception of type System.Security.Principal.IdentityNotMappedException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Some or all identity references could not be translated

 

This was generated after entering the SQL server name/DB and the Farm account credentials…

 

I had to throw away my DC, my SQL server and my SharePoint 2010 server…

 

Starting all over again :(

 

So, the correct sysprep method is as follows:

 

1. Forget the GUI!
2. Run (from elevated command prompt):

c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /quiet /generalize /oobe /shutdown

 

 

This works fine…

 

-I am ignoring the spelling of “generalize” ;)

 

--EDIT--

 

Please note: the mini-setup that runs after booting a sysprep R2 image does not prompt for Computer name, you’ll have to change this manually. I would recommend not changing the computer name in the same operation as joining a domain, change the name and reboot, then join domain and reboot. This may no longer be an issue but I remember having issues in the Windows 2000 days with doing this and these kind of practices tend to stick with me ;)