Days in the Life of an IT Consultant: Windows 7 32 Bit Unattend.xml file for Sysprep

Days in the Life of an IT Consultant

Windows 7 32 Bit Unattend.xml file for Sysprep

After working out the whole Sysprep Process for Windows 2008 R2 last week, this week I was asked to image-deploy a whole bunch of notebooks for one of our clients. Of course, as per best practice I had to sysprep the Windows 7 Base Image to ensure that unique SIDs are generated for each notebook deployed.

The process for the Sysprep Unattend.xml creation is exactly the same as that for Windows 2008 posted here, just that you obviously use the Windows 7 file as opposed to the Windows 2008... duh

A quick summary of the process:

Download & Install the Windows 7 AIK
Copy the Install.wim & *.clg files from the Windows 7 Media on to your local hard drive
Remove the Read-Only attribute from the WIM & CLG files you copied
Run Windows System Image Manage & Load the Windows 7 Image
Create a new Unattend.xml in WSIM
Drag and Drop the various Windows Components into the Unattend.xml and customize them as you will
Save the Unattend.xml
Copy it to c:\windows\system32\sysprep on the computer you wish to sysprep
Run sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:"path to unattend.xml" file

As usual, for those who are looking for a simple, basic unattend.xml answer file, here it is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
    <settings pass="specialize">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <Display>
                <ColorDepth>32</ColorDepth>
                <HorizontalResolution>1024</HorizontalResolution>
                <VerticalResolution>768</VerticalResolution>
            </Display>
            <ProductKey>XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX</ProductKey>
            <RegisteredOrganization>Registered Organization</RegisteredOrganization>
            <RegisteredOwner>Registered Owner</RegisteredOwner>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <settings pass="generalize">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <RegisteredOrganization>Registered Organization</RegisteredOrganization>
            <RegisteredOwner>Registered Owner</RegisteredOwner>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <cpi:offlineImage cpi:source="catalog:c:/w7sysprep/install_windows 7 enterprise.clg" xmlns:cpi="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:cpi" />
</unattend>