Sysprep

Sysprep is Microsoft's System Preparation Tool for Microsoft Windows operating system deployment.

Sysprep
Sysprep on Windows 10
Developer(s)Microsoft
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows

History

Sysprep was originally introduced for use with Windows NT 4.0. Later versions introduced for Windows 2000 and Windows XP are available for download from Microsoft and included in the Windows CD. Windows Vista is the first version of Windows NT to include a version of Sysprep that was independent of the hardware abstraction layer (HAL), in the "out of box" installation.

Purpose

Desktop deployment is typically performed via disk cloning utility. Sysprep can be used to prepare an operating system for disk cloning and restoration via a disk image.

Windows operating system installations include many unique elements per installation that need to be "generalized" before capturing and deploying a disk image to multiple computers. Some of these elements include:

Sysprep seeks to solve these issues by allowing for the generation of new computer names, unique SIDs, and custom driver cache databases during the Sysprep process.

Administrators can use tools such as SetupMgr.exe (Windows XP) or the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows Vista/7/Server 2008) to generate answer files that Sysprep will process on new computer deployments.

Alternatives to Sysprep

Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals created a partial alternative to Sysprep, named NewSID, in 1997. However, after his own further analysis and research, Russinovich concluded that having duplicate SIDs is a non-issue and arranged NewSID's retirement.[2]

gollark: Presumably the idea is to just remove/backdoor the encryption stuff which is easily used and accessible to consumers (encrypted messaging, full disk encryption on phones), which is not going to stop anyone who is doing evilness but will definitely allow widespread surveillance on most people.
gollark: They obviously can't actually stop people from using encryption in general. Encryption is very widely distributed maths and code. Even if all the code ceased to exist you could reconstruct working stuff from even just the Wikipedia pages.
gollark: And the many times the UK and other places have insisted that end to end encryption is bad because something something terrorism think of the children everything will be awful if we can't spy on all messages ever.
gollark: There was that fun time when the UK Home Secretary talked about "getting people who understand the necessary hashtags" talking when yet again demanding an impossible magic backdoor.
gollark: I was going to write a blog post on my highly active™ website about this but it turns out that writing is hard and other people did it better.

References
  1. Radzikowski, Przemek (April 17, 2008). "Force Sysprep to Prompt for a Computer Name During Mini-Setup in Windows XP". Capitalhead. Archived from the original on August 4, 2008. Retrieved June 16, 2009.
  2. Russinovich, Mark (November 3, 2009). "The Machine SID Duplication Myth (and Why Sysprep Matters)". Mark's Blog. Microsoft. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
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