When is it necessary to run "Sysprep"

OS : XP Pro SP2

In response to questions on this Forum, Acronis Support often give the advice that the user should run the Windows Sysprep tool. I am having difficulty in understanding why this advice comes up so frequently.

Sysprep was specifically created to enable OEM's and Corporate System Administrators to deploy Windows quickly on multiple computers. I would think that there would seldom be a need by users of this Forum to deploy Windows on multiple systems.

There may occasionally be a user who wants to migrate an "old" computer to a "new" computer, and in this event Sysprep would be required - but how often does that happen?

In the event that a System disk goes completely bad and a user wanted to Restore the System Image to a new disk (raw out the box) then that restoration should occur without any need to invoke Sysprep.

So the question is : "In the context of True Image, when is it necessary to run Sysprep in an XP environment and why?"

 

I think that most posts mentioning SysPrep were indeed related to that case. I'm not surprised about these questions emerging, considering how fast computers get obsolete.

The replacement of a HD on the same computer definitely does not require SysPrep.

 

Hello Tabvla,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that Microsoft System Preparation Tool (sysprep) allows replacing drivers only for Plug-and-Play devices (sound cards, network adapters, video cards etc.). As for system HAL and boot device driver, they must be identical in the source and target computers (see Microsoft Knowledge Base, articles 302577 and 216915).

Please note that as bVolk use of Microsoft System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) is not necessary when you would like to replace the old hard drive with the new one.

We also recommend you to use Microsoft System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) when you would like to create multi-boot system (use the same operating system on another partition/hard drive).

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

Thank you. I think the question has now been answered.