Hi,
I followed the tip found on the forum post below relating to "clean shutdown" and closed the VM with "shutdown.exe /s /t 0" but still have the "A fatal error occurred while tying to sysprep the machine" when imaging the machine (Lenovo T60, 3Gb RAM, 55 HDD).
http://deploycentral.com/topic/516-deployment-fails-after-updating-reference-vm-with-windows-updates/
I will try a manual install of Windows.
Michael.