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I have 2 exactly the same configured Windows installations, both 32bit and 64bit. These Windows installations are referring to other other drives for specific settings, such as:

  • The users folder is redirected to the U:\Users drive
  • Some programs are installed on the P:\ drive.

The OS is installed on the C:\ drive.

For constantly testing these configured machines with the settings, I used a non-generalized sysprep, and booted back into the same virtual machine (I did not test it on another machine yet).

These non-generalized syspreps into OOBE worked perfectly. It refers to this question.

When I was done configuring the machines how I wanted, and knew they both worked in a non-generalized sysprep. I sysprepped them with the generalize option on.

From here I made a WinPE boot environment and captured an image of the OS partition (C:\) and the PROGRAMS partition (P:\).

Now I made a new virtual machine and booted into WinPE with the device connected where the captured images we're on.

Here I created the following (needed) partitions using diskpart:

enter image description here

These are the partitions that correspond to the sysprepped machines that worked without generalize. The system partition was just a try, I also tried doing it without it.

After having created the partitions I applied the images to the corresponding disks (C:\ -> OS partition, P:\ -> Programs partition). This by using the DISM /apply-image command. I am sure I choose the right index of the .WIM file.

Then I used the bcdboot C:\Windows /s C: for creating the boot files, this successfully worked.

After restarting the machine using the exit command and not booting into WinPE, I got the following error message.

Error message

Image taken from this Wintips article

When opening up notepad via SHIFT + F10 and opening the \Windows\Panther\setuperr.log file, there is this line:

2016-08-20 21:13:01, Error [0x0606ae] IBS [SetupCl library] Required profile hive does not exist [\??\E:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\NTUSER.DAT].

Note: removed whitespace from the error message

Also, when I open up notepad and check for my drives when opening a file, there are all kind of drives I did NOT make in WinPE.

enter image description here

The only thing that is correct is the C:\ drive, the PROGRAMS drive should be P:\ and the USERS drive should be U:\.

UPDATE 05/09/2016:

After the error shows up when booting into the applied Windows image, I opened up the CMD by pressing SHIFT + F10 and opened up the DISKPART program.

Here I selected the drives with the incorrect drive letters and re-set the drive letters by using

assign letter=X

on the right corresponding drive letter.

After rebooting the machine, it still threw the same error.

Questions

  • Where did these random drive letters come from? I already set them in WinPE before starting the Windows installation.
  • How can I make my generalized sysprep work with these settings?
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Bas
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1 Answers1

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After a load of debuggingg, checking log files I finnaly found the issue. My default program files location in the registry was set to the C:\ drive (as default).

I made a second drive P:\ (PROGRAMS), where some software was installed on. After reading this article, I opened that log file and looked for errors in the registry.

In one of the lines, it stated that it couldn't find the key for the AVAST software, which was installed on the other drive.

After de-installing AVAST, the error didn't occur anymore.

Bas
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