Comments on: How to Sysprep Windows

By: James

James — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:39:58 +0000

You can copy/paste the VHD files, but I personally prefer to create linked clones. Linked clones requires less hard drive space as all linked clones share the same base image.

By: Adel

Adel — Tue, 31 May 2011 07:31:30 +0000

hey james thx for the info
i was wondering if u want to create multiple cloned images, u meant that we can simply copy and paste the .vhd and use it in different new VMs?
thx

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 02 May 2011 04:18:27 +0000

Very helpful post. Thanks!
FYI: I changed my Windows Server 2008 R2 VM from 1 processor to 4 processors a few hours ago and have not seen a blue screen yet.

By: James

James — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 02:14:44 +0000

@scottrell – When I tried it years ago – I believe with Windows Server 2003 – the VM booted after changing from one to two CPUs, but BSOD’d after a few minutes. It wasn’t immediate, but it happened fairly quickly. I checked Windows Internals 4th Ed (which covers up to Windows Server 2003) and it still has separate uni-/multi-processor HALs. I seem to remember Microsoft eliminating the uni-proc HAL for Windows Vista/7/2008, but a quick google didn’t turn up a definitive answer.

By: scottrell

scottrell — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 22:43:13 +0000

So far, everything I’ve seen on the web is that the uni-proc HAL is gone from Vista on up, perhaps that’s really Vista SP1 on up. I’ve also seen in several recommendations to enable Detect HAL in the vm (msconfig, Boot, Advanced).

By: scottrell

scottrell — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 21:54:01 +0000

OK, thanks, that clears it up. Is there a known test to get a BSOD, or should it blue screen at boot up? I just added a 2nd processor to my Win2008 Ent x86 server vm and it came up without a complaint. (using vSphere 4 as the host OS for the vm infrastructure)

Since re-installing 2008 is relatively fast and easy on a vm (just a short afternoon), I may just set up my template as a two processor machine anyway.

By: James

James — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 21:15:48 +0000

@scottrell – I haven’t checked whether Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 still use separate uni-processor and multi-processor HALs. (Windows XP, Windows Server 2000, and Windows Server 2003 definitely did.) Safest to create a single image for a multi-processor HAL and then use that for all your builds – both uni- and multi-processor VMs. The uni-processor HAL took some shortcuts (for instance, skipping locks when modifying certain kernel data structures) to improve performance as it knew that only one CPU would be present. This is why a uni-processor OS will BSOD when run with multiple CPUs – internal kernel data structures become corrupt.

By: scottrell

scottrell — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 21:01:07 +0000

“DO NOT change number of processors from 1 to 2…” Does this mean I’ll need two vm templates if I’ll need both single processor and multi-processor server vms?

By: James

James — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:36:11 +0000

@adari - No idea what could be wrong. A detailed error message would help. Plus I'm just a developer who uses VMs and sysprep in my programming work. I don't claim to be an expert. I would recommend asking on Server Fault.

By: adari

adari — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 16:13:46 +0000

In cloning a working windows 2008, I run sysprep on windows 2008-the command created some files in a folder – (i selected generalize with shutdown option). after successful shutdown i enabled the undo disks in VPC settings. i ran the vm to create, while running the vm – got this error… ‘windows setup could not configure Windows to run on this computer’s hardware’ and keep on restarting.

I lost a working vm, please help me on this!!!.
Note – Windows 7 is the host machine, windows 2008 is a VM.

Regads,
adari