Question : Major help is needed customizing the Windows 7 default user profile

Hello all,

I have been having major, major issues trying to get Windows 7 to correctly handle customizing the default user profile.

No matter what I have tried, I end up getting the following error message after the machine has rebooted:

Windows could not parse or process the unattended answer file for pass [specialize]. The settings specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup].

I have followed a bevy of guides that discuss how to customize the default user profile in Windows 7. Unfortunately, nothing as worked. I am quite literally banging my head against a wall here, growing more and more frustrated by the second.

As a reference, I have primarily been following this guide:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973289

I have also tried instructions posted in another guide that had me save the unattend file as sysprep.xml located in c:\windows\system32\sysprep - I have had no luck with that either.

I have attached my Unattend file, as well as two zip files containing logs that should detail the errors I'm getting.

I am at my wit's end here, as NOTHING is working at all. Any help you could give me to get this working would be GREATLY appreciated.

Attachments:

Unattend.xml (693 bytes) (File Type Details) 

This is the Unattend file I created with Windows AIK

sysprep.zip (14 KB) (File Type Details) 

This is the contents of C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep - I have removed the sysprep.exe file and the sysprep_succeeded.tag file

panther.zip (32 KB) (File Type Details) 

The contents of C:\Windows\Panther - non-allowable filetypes were removed from the file

Answer : Major help is needed customizing the Windows 7 default user profile

I have been able to resolve the issue on my own.

In my situation, some bad software installation packages were causing the machine to get screwed up during sysprep.

I changed the way the software was installed on the image and the issue went away. As a further note, Ghost AutoInstallation packages were the cause of our issue.