Beginning with Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft offers a "system
preparation" tool (in short: Sysprep) to prepare a Windows system for
deployment or redistribution. Whereas Windows 2000 and XP ship with
Sysprep on the installation medium, the tool also is available for
download on the Microsoft web site. In a standard installation of
Windows Vista and 7, Sysprep is already included. Sysprep mainly
consists of an executable called
sysprep.exe which is invoked by the
user to put the Windows installation into preparation mode.
Starting with VirtualBox 3.2.2, the Guest Additions offer a way to
launch a system preparation on the guest operating system in an
automated way, controlled from the host system. To achieve that, see
Section 4.8, “Guest control” for using the feature with the
special identifier sysprep as the
program to execute, along with the user name
sysprep and password
sysprep for the credentials. Sysprep
then gets launched with the required system rights.
Note
Specifying the location of "sysprep.exe" is not possible -- instead the following paths are used (based on the operating system):
-
C:\sysprep\sysprep.exefor Windows NT 4.0, 2000 and XP -
%WINDIR%\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exefor Windows Vista, 2008 Server and 7
The Guest Additions will automatically use the appropriate path to execute the system preparation tool.