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Preparing a Windows Template with Sysprep
The correct right way to create a Windows guest Guest to serve as a template is to enter audit mode during the installation of Windows . Thus any no local user will be created, other than the administrator. In audit mode, you can configure the template installing any programs you want. Once finished, you must run sysprep . This tool will shut down the guest at the end, so we must keep it in RunOnce mode.
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There is no limit to the number of times sysprep can be run on a system. But after executing it, Windows will need to be activated again, which can be done up to three times on a given Windows installation, or Windows will stop letting users to log in the system after 30 days. To avoid this problem, |
after configuring the template, create a copy |
where you will execute sysprep. Thus, if you need to make changes to the template, |
you can |
make them in the original (which has not gone through the generalization/activation cycle) and repeat the procedure as often as necessary. |
When you run sysprep us the following window:
For the task at hand, we must will select "Start Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE) system", "generalize" and "OffShutdown". Pressing "OK", the process of generalization is made, then the guest will turn off. From here we can turn it into a template.
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From Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012, the sysprep command supports a new option |
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boot are noticeably faster |
. However, all clones must run on |
machines with the same hardware profile. The complete command line would be: |
Answer File
When we have prepared a template with sysprep, an answer file is used to automate the initial configuration at the next boot. That file is searched in a series of predefined paths. In particular, one of which is " A:\unattend.xml " ( APB No. 4 ). For that reason, desktop policies have a field to set up a file /flexvdi/local as answer file. If this file exists, the host agent insert it into the floppy disk each volatile clone named "unattend.xml", so that can be used to automatically configure the clones. In addition, you can use the following three variables within the file, which will replace the host agent before inserting it into the floppy disk, with specific values for each volatile:
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