Hi Friends,
Sometime back, I had blogged about sysprep-ing a Windows Server 2008 R2 image. I was setting up a Windows Server 2008 cluster between multiple Hyper-V images. You can find that blog here;
This time I am setting up a Windows Server 2003 cluster between multiple Hyper V images and had to sysprep a Windows Server 2003 image. So here are some tips about that:
By default, the Windows Server 2003 OS installation will not have sysprep tool installed. I faintly remember reading about NEWSID tool which has been pulled off by Microsoft. So there were two options in front of me:
– Get the NEWSID tool from somewhere 🙂 (will not be supported by Microsoft)
– Find the Windows Server 2003 specific sysprep.exe
Upon a search, I came across this: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=14830, which is a sysprep tool for Windows Server 2003 SP2, but I needed the one for Windows Server 2003 ‘R2’ S2. Well, this one might work for your installation; it did not for me. So where is the OS specific sysprep.exe?
Explore the installation media of Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2. In the root, you will find a folder by the name of Support. This folder has a file called deploy.cab. Extract the content of this cab file and you will see a file called sysprep.exe. 🙂 – Use that as that is your OS specific sysprep.exe.
Happy sysprep-ing!
