From: "Geo." 

from one of the mail lists I monitor:

During my end of the semester re-image process I came across what appears
to be an undocumented bug in Windows XP SP1 and the sysprep tool. The bug
makes it impossible to image an installation where %systemroot% resides on
a volume other than C:

Occasionally during the initial install process the Windows XP setup will
juggle the drive letters and you'll end up with something other than C: for
your hard drive. (even though it is the primary device on the primary
controller and it's the only partition.) I haven't tested this part of the
problem in detail, but I've gotten similar reports from our central IT
department specifically with some of the Dell Optiplex GX2** series. My
guess is that this probably happens one out of a hundred times.

The bug that I found is in Microsoft's copy protection software that
attempts to make sure you are using a valid copy of XP. Apparently the path
to whatever file is referenced to determine this is hard-coded. If you use
a tool such as Symantec's Ghost to make an image of the drive with the
issue described above; when the image is written to an identical machine it
will boot with an error stating that Windows couldn't verify the validity
of your license. This state is irreparable and will prevent anyone
including the local admin from logging on, even in safe mode.

Thinking that this may be a problem that sysprep could fix, I attempted
that as well, but with similar results. Sysprep also seems to assume some
files are in a subdirectory of C:\. Sysprep will run and appear to complete
normally, but the system image that results is unusable popping a dialog
box stating that Windows is not properly installed.

I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out why my image wouldn't work
until I noticed the system drive was "E:" instead of
"C:". My advice to anyone that creates system images on a regular
basis would be to check your drive letters after initial installation
*before* you put any additional software on the machine to be imaged. It
could save you a lot of extra work.



Clayton McCauley

e-mail: mccauleyc AT cofc DOT edu

System Administrator

Computer Science

College of Charleston

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