Thought I was crazy, but it looks like this is widespread: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/exponential-algorithm-making-windows-xp-miserable-could-be-fixed/
– Soli Deo Gloria
There are 10 types of people in the world: those are understand binary and those who do not.
Thought I was crazy, but it looks like this is widespread: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/exponential-algorithm-making-windows-xp-miserable-could-be-fixed/
– Soli Deo Gloria
I was blissfully updating my Windows 7 x64 image and then sysprepped it. Brought it back up on bare metal and then encountered the dreaded “Windows could not Finish Configuring the System” error message. I only ran some Microsoft updates and installed updates for Adobe Flash and VLC…not exactly image breaking stuff and programs I have updated many times before. Now it is the year 2013 and you would think that Microsoft would have developed a bit more graceful way of telling me what the problem is from this screen instead of making me dive into log files in C:windowspanther.
After some searching , I found these steps posted by Jeff Harrsion over at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/658528ce-6eb5-403b-ae41-458147c2c044/sysprep-failling-after-reboot-into-oobe. They have been posted here:
1.) Push Shift+F10 to get to a command prompt 2.) Navigate to C:windowsPantherSurprisingly, the problem was the same exact problem I was having! ESET includes something called Self Defense that “protects” its registry keys from modification. Sysprep tries to modify these keys in some way, fails to do so and then dies. Turning off the Self Defense feature in ESET and then running sysprep fixes the problem.
Of course, Self Defense is a nice feature to thwart viruses, so you can turn it back on after sysprep in 2 ways. First is just to push down a REG file and then import it with regedit /s:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ESET\ESET SecurityCurrentVersionPlugins1000600Profiles@My profile]
"SelfdefenceEnabled"=dword:00000001
Or just add a custom run command in the MDT task sequencer with this command line:
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\ESET\ESET SecurityCurrentVersionPlugins1000600Profiles@My profile" /v SelfdefenceEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0x1 /f
Upon the first reboot, Self Defense will be turned back on. Self Defense had been turned on for years and I’m not sure why it is causing a problem now, but it is!
– Soli Deo Gloria