VMWare OS Customization Fails

Question

Writing this for anyone that may experience it in the future.

PROBLEM

I created a Win10 Template in vCenter and applied my normal configurations and making sure it was fully patched. Cloned this and installed Office 2024 LSTC Pro Plus.

The OSCustomization I created would fail. Looked at the logs and what's displayed in this post (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/sysprepos-guest-customization-does-not-start-on/f898df5f-a328-47fc-bdbe-1b5c29042aa9?rtAction=1743800171281). Specifically calling out the line: GuestCustUtilLib: DEBUG] customizationState: 4, errCode: 104. Didnt find much on this but moved on.

Attempt to manually run sysprep and it errored out. Reviewed the logs and quickly note that there are issues with Bing Search and Copilot Appx

Error SYSPRP Package Microsoft.Copilot_1.25.031.112.0_x64_8wekyb3d8bbwe was installed for a user, bit not provisioned for all users. This package will not function properly in the sysprep image.

LOG LOCATIONS

• OSCustomization: C:\Windows\Temp\vmware-imc\guestcust
• Sysprep: %windir%\System32\Sysprep\Panther\setupact

RESOLUTION
Run:

• Import-Module Appx, DISM
• Remove-AppxPackage Microsoft.Copilot_1.25.031.112.0_x64_8wekyb3d8bbwe
• repeat for all packages listed in the sysprep log

Shutdown and convert to template. After this OS Customization works flawlessly.