How to capture profile customisation when taking a specialized or generalized image of a Windows VM in Azure

Question

Hi All,

I would like more information on customising and saving a specialized or generalized image of a Windows VM in Azure. Step-by-step instructions would be awesome.

When syspreping a Windows VM offline, you would generally boot into audit mode, make your app and profile customisations, then supply a custom answers file as an unattended.xml file with things like CopyProfile = true so that the customisation of the default administrator account is captured to the default profile during the specialisation pass.

However, in Azure, audit mode doesn't work, as you can only connect to the VM via RDP, and this connection method is blocked or disabled.

In addition, Microsoft states in this article (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/generalize#related-content) that customised answer files are not supported, so you can't configure things like CopyProfile in an unattend.xml.

How are profile customisations captured properly for a Windows Azure VM (including all desktop and start bar customisations)? TBH, as far as I can remember, start bar customisations are complex as well, which has been the case forever.

Cheers.

Answer 1

Hi Swin,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Platform! Thank you for asking your question here.

Please refer to these Create a VM from a generalized image version.

Connect to your VM via RDP and make all the necessary profile customizations, including desktop and start bar customizations.

Ensure that all the customizations are applied to the default administrator account and Run Sysprep.

If you have any further queries, do let us know.

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