The other day i was asked for some help with a brand new computer.
The problem with the machine was sysprep, it booted fine into Windows 7 but showed the sysprep window every time.
So let’s sysprep it again and let it reboot.
But instead of rebooting it showed a little error message:
” A Fatal Error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine “
After a manual reboot the machine hangs at the Setup Starting Services screen.
The following steps gave me back my Windows 7 without futher problems:
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When the error message apears, open up a CMD window with SHIFT + F11
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Open the REGEDIT
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Navigate to hklm\system\setup
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Change CmdLine to blank (no value entered) (was oobe\windeploy.exe)
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Change CreateNewQueueOnFirstBoot to 0 (was 1)
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Change OOBEInProgress to 0 (was 1) change SetupPhase to 0 (was 4)
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Change SetupShutdownRequired to 0 (was 1)
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Change SetupType to 0 (was 2)
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Change SystemSetupInProgress to 0 (was1)
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Exit REGEDIT and reboot
I my case i didn’t know the local administrator account password so i started i safe mode to add a new local user with administrative privileges.