Created windows 7 image with expired sysprep rearm count.

[Guest mattstarczak]

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I work in several schools that all required much the same programs on their image, based around a windows 7 enterprise iso. All legal.

Using MDt2010 I built an image in vmserver, and sucked it back using the litetouch.vbs with a sysprep and capture task sequence.

I then took the captured .wim to two schools, deployed it to a virtual machine in each school, made site appropriate changes and ran litetouch.vbs again with the same task sequence.

I then started happily deploying the image and realised after getting to the magic 25 that my KMS server was stuck on one.

A reasonable bit of googling lead me to the horrible truth.

It appears that somehow I broke things by shifting the .wims and rebuilding the image.

I've tried the rearm trick, but that hasn't worked.

I've tried the sysprep /generalize method, but thats erroring out. Looking at the sysprep log I can see that the rearm count is exceeded.

I've tried doing a repair install on a machine in the hope that I can find a method that doesn't involve me having to reimage the computers.

Its bad enough that I have to rebuild the image, but I've 25 machines that I'd prefer not to have to reimage.

Is there a way to get windows 7 to change its cmid other than reimaging it?

BTW, the first school that i built the image at has deployed very nicely, KMS is happy, windows happily authenticating.

 

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