Tariq Jaber.. IT Professional

If you want to sysprep a Hyper-V machine, make sure it has no snapshots.

I was syspreping one of my Hyper-V machines, I copied the syspreped vhd and created a new virtual machine linked to this existing syspreped vhd. When I start this new virtual machine it starts as it wasn’t syspreped with menu to select either to “Safe mode” or to “Start Windows normally”.

I deleted the snapshots that I don’t need and I applied others to the original virtual machine. After this, I was able to sysprep and create a new virtual machine successfully.

PS: Usually we will sysprep a clean machine, not a machine with applications and services installed on it with so many snapshots.

If you want to sysprep a Windows Server 2008 machine, it is an easy process :

• Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep
• Run Sysprep.exe
• Check “Generalize” (this regenerates SID’s)
• Change Shutdown option to to Shutdown.

That is it :)