Oh how could I forget this… Today I was working on syspreping some Windows 7 x86 VM’s that I built earlier in the week. For what ever reason they kept getting stuck in the sysprep process and I couldn’t figure out why. I checked the logs and there wasn’t much that stud out in them and everything else appeared to be working fine.
What could it be I pondered. Why are all my VM’s getting stuck at the customization step. It just didn’t make sense. I knew it had to be something with the template because all of the VM’s coming off the template were having the exact same problem. (See screen shot below)
I googled and googled for a while but couldn’t find much of anything. Then I came across a VMware KB on Syspreps failing because of underscores in the DNS name. And it jogged my memory…
When I created the template VM I selected Windows 7 X64 for the OS type when creating the VM hardware. (See screen shot below.) If I changed it over to Windows 7 x86 all the sudden my issues clear up and the VM’s sysprep correctly. Why is this… Because VMware uses that little OS drop down box to figure out which VMware tools to use and, evidently, which version of sysprep to use.
To make this change you will want to perform the following steps:
- Shutdown the VM OR convert it from a Template to a VM.
- Right click on the VM and edit its settings
- Click on the options tab.
- Select General options
- Set the OS type in the drop down (Paying attention to 32 or 64 Bit versions)
- Click Ok
- And you are technically done.
- Its also a good idea at this point to power it up and update the VMware tools installed on the guest so it is running the correct versions.
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Tony
