What's the point of audit mode (with sysprep)?

[Migration User]

What's the point of audit mode?  If I already installed a bunch of apps, do I have to start over, if I want to use sysprep?

[Migration User]

Audit mode is more for OEM's that pre-install the OS and apps.  It allows them to boot up and verify everything is working properly and then reseal before sending the machine out the door.  This can also reset the activation as well.  I believe that's what it was for (it's been a number of years since I've been on that side of things in the OEM world).

[Migration User]

So it's ok if I skip audit mode, and just run sysprep after I install all my apps?

[Migration User]

I would say yes, at least in the XP world.  If this is for Vista or 7, I can't speak authoritatively for that.

[Migration User]

is that you run audit mode to help set your default profile. You still have to run sysprep after that with the /oobe switch, then shutdown and capture the image prior to sending it out to others. Don't forget your unattend.xml file (and put it in the right place)!

[Migration User]

That's when you do the <CopyProfile> thing?

Ok, I think audit mode is if you have a generic windows 7 image, and then post-imaging you want to install custom apps for one user, but then still have the oobe welcome screen come up after that.

[Migration User]

You use audit mode to setup the default profile which will affect all users that log into the computer. You do this before you create your WIM, ghost or any other image file. Audit mode is also where you install applications that need to be installed for users to do their job before you capture the image as well as after the image has been laid down if needed.

You will need to re-run sysprep with the /oobe switch in order to make the Windows Welcome screen appear otherwise your image will stay in audit mode.

[Migration User]

I can use CopyProfile just fine without audit mode.  BUT, if I have more than one profile, the source of the copy will be either:

!.  The administrator profile if it exists, or
2. The profile created most recently

Plus, if HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList refers to a deleted profile, Windows Setup will fail.  This registry key doesn't seem to be cleaned up when you delete an account.

[Migration User]

It's been a couple of years since I did anything with imaging, but sysprep comes in handy for several reasons..  Like it was mentioned before, we can customize the default profile so the user gets the corporate logo'd background and UI tweaks we want right out of the gate, the initial boot process after sysprep will automatically join the domain, and since the PC will do a device scan on initial boot up, it's super handy for hardware independent imaging.

The 50,000 foot view of my old imaging process:

Sysprepped image dropped to the client PC
Tokenized sysprep file dropped onto the freshly imaged PC with unique computer name
Drivers for the specific model dropped to the PC in a standard drivers folder
Client PC reboots, gets named properly, loads the correct drivers, and joins the domain
Client PC reboots one last time and is ready for deployment or further software installs if needed

[Migration User]

I've never used sysprep with xp with the boot.ini.  I had one image for multiple machine types, both mac and pc.  But now with the BCD ("Bull Crap Disk") in Windows 7, sysprep is a nice way to get the image booting on every machine type.  CopyProfile needs improvement.

[Migration User]

You have to make sure you delete profiles with the "Configure Advance User Profile Properties" option or make sure you go back and clean up the ProfileList. Once I cleaned up the profile list on my image default profiles worked fine. However, it is sucks that MS doesn't copy your pinned taskbar items too.

[Migration User]

There's some extra step in the answer file to add up to 3 taskbar pins.  Or you can do it with a combination of .lnk files and registry changes (taskband I think it's called).