Windows 10 Build 1903 sysprep error

[ttran]

Updated our image VM to latest Windows 10 build 1903.  When I go to image a laptop I get a fatal sysprep error.  Any ideas what could be causing this issue?

[SmartDeploySupport]

Hello,

Unfortunately, the in-place upgrade to 1903 is most likely to be the cause of the issue. We do not recommend installing in-place upgrades on your reference VM, because it can lead to Sysprep errors of the type you've described.

Our best recommendation would be to create a new, blank virtual machine, and install Windows 10 Version 1909 using the latest OS media from an official Microsoft source, which includes this update. Then install all updates, shutdown gracefully (shutdown /s /t 0), and run a test capture and deployment.

If this is successful, then back up a copy of the VM in this known-good state, and then you can power on the VM and begin installing software. This way, you'll have a copy of the VM that you can roll back to, in the event that any specific software installation or configuration change results in a deployment failure.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at support@smartdeploy.com.

Glenn
SmartDeploy Support

[RPA]

I also had similar issue, but I used official MS source .iso for 1903 Enterprise and built clean image.  I did everything to customize my image, then captured and the did test deployment which was fine, then some production deployments on small subset of machines, and no problems.  Then I remembered that I did not install latest updates.  I went through and began modifying the image with updates that included October cumulative update (can't recall KB off-hand).  After re-capturing, I receive 'sysprep' error.  I had to go back into my VM, uninstall cumulative update to eliminate the 'sysprep' error during deployment.  First time that I've come across a cumulative update changing the OS enough to bomb SmartDeploy deployment (and I've done images across LTSB 1607/1903 as well as Os 1703, 1709, 1803 & 1809 without coming across OS updates causing sysprep errors.  That was under build 2.0.3040 of SmartDeploy.  I have yet to have the time to really investigate further as the group of machines I was doing, I simply ran updates post deployment as a workaround.