How to sysprep Windows 2008

I spend most of my time with virtual PC’s creating recreating for testing. one thing I hate is to create new virtual PC’s for testing. Instead of that I prefer to use a clean installed OS cloned. Now this has been working fine for me in Windows XP, Windows 2000/2003. I just do a cloning under VMware and then run the Newsid utility and then join to the domain. There you go easy as that. But now with windows 2008 Sysinternals haven’t given any tools ( I mean properly working newsid) So we have to rely on Syspep method.

In windows 2000/2003 time you will have to find these utilities in the media. Now with the new kid it’s already in the pocket. You just got to %WINDIR%\System32\Sysprep and then run the sysprep.exe
If you want to create a new SID, remember to CHECK the “Generalize” checkbox - or else you have to go all over again…

That’s it. Happy cloning guys/gals.

Windows 7 – Problem Step Recorder (PSR)

I have been using Windows 7 in a VMware PC and I’ve to agree this OS is really cool. I have only given 1 GB memory for that and the functionality wise this stable. I didn’t encounter any system crashes so far. Now looking around in the TechNet about further enhancement about this product I found a nifty tool integrated in Windows 7 called as PSR (Problem Step Recorder)

Basic idea behind this tool is allow user to do screen capturing of the problem they encounter and then send that to a technical person. Now this is a life saving feature for any technical person in order to provide support for a en user. Think about a helpdesk environment where end user and technical person spend endless time discussing about the error message. There are few key things helpdesk may fail to solve the problem properly to the end user,

1. End user cannot describe the problem properly since he is not very technical person.

2. Technical support person cannot recreate the problem in his side according to the information he is getting from the end user.

3. Problem can be a totally new one for both parties.

So using this screen capture tool end user will be able the capture the error he encountered and then send to technical person via e-mail or any other preferred method.

More information can be found over here.