Sysprep failure

Question

Hi,

We have a handful of HP EliteDesk 800 G3 desktops that were purchased with Windows 10 licensing but loaded with Windows 7. I now want to upgrade them to Windows 10 so I downloaded the restore image from HP and installed it on one of the systems. I had it all setup to make an image, yes I believe I have rights to make images because I'm on the open licensing platform, applied sysprep and all was good. Then I realized the restore image is at build 1803, so I upgraded my model to 1909.

I ran sysprep again going into audit mode so I could just check things out and then I generalized it for the OOBE and had it shutdown so I could make an image. But that seems to have broken it, now when I apply my image on another machine, right after POST I get the message: Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer, restart the installation. This is true now for the model computer as well, can't even simply boot it up.

Doing my research it seems all of the recommended solutions involve restoring the computer from automatic repair or manually creating a user account. All of which presume the computer was already running Windows 10 and has restore partitions available. Neither of with are true for my case.

So I'm looking for other suggestions. But now that I've written this it occurs to me I will most likely need to start from scratch and rebuild the entire model computer. In which case I think I'll try downloading a clean Windows 10 iso from Microsoft and start from there. That will mean I'll need to find all of the correct drivers but at least it will probably start from a more up to date installation.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Linn

Answer 1

Hi,
You could try the following:

1. On the “Windows Could Not Complete The Installation Windows” press SHIFT+F10, to bring up a Command window
2. Type SECPOL.MSC and press ENTER, to bring up the Local Security Policy editor
3. Expand ACCOUNT POLICIES > PASSWORD POLICY
4. Set MINIMUM PASSWORD LENGTH to 0
5. Set PASSWORD MUST MEET COMPLEXITY REQUIREMENTS to DISABLED
6. Press ALT TAB to change the focus to the INSTALL WINDOWS error dialog box and press the ENTER key on the OK button
7. Reboot pc and check

If you wish to build a new image, you could download the latest version of Windows 10 here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/windows10

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Answer 2

@Anonymous , thanks for the suggestion. I tried it and MINIMUM PASSWORD LENGTH was set to 0 and PASSWORD MUST MEET COMPLEXITY REQUIREMENTS was DISABLED as well. Reboot, but nothing changed it is still stuck at that message.

Just to see what happens I tried booting into safe mode, same results, couldn't even get into safe mode.

I also gave the resetting of Windows a try, ended up trying it two times. In case someone else finds this interesting I'll document what I did here...

First time through it got me back to the OOBE and I went directly into audit mode. I tried Generalize and OOBE experience and it popped up a prompt to reboot again and right back where I started from. That reboot short circuited the sysprep process as I had sysprep set to shutdown.

I tried resetting one more time, this time it did something unexpected and asked for the local Administrator password, which I haven't set. So I hit Enter to continue and after the reset it prompted me to change the Administrator password, so I did. It booted and let me in, so I ran Windows updates for GP and rebooted the computer. Now it comes up and tells me my Administrator account is locked. There is no other account on the machine so I'm stuck and can't log in... lol

Back to the drawing board with installing a clean Windows 10 image.

Thanks!