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<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="sysprep">
  <title>Automated Windows System Preparation</title>
  
  <body>
    <p>Microsoft offers a system preparation tool called Sysprep, to prepare a Windows system for deployment or redistribution. For most Windows versions, Sysprep is included in a default installation. Sysprep mainly consists of an executable called <userinput>sysprep.exe</userinput> which is invoked by the user to put the Windows installation into preparation mode. </p>
    <p>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. See <xref href="guestadd-guestcontrol.dita">Guest Control of Applications</xref>
      for details of how to use this feature with the special identifier <codeph>sysprep</codeph> as the program to
      execute, along with the user name <codeph>sysprep</codeph> and password <codeph>sysprep</codeph> for the
      credentials. Sysprep is then started with the required system rights. </p>
    <note>
      <p>Specifying the location of <userinput>sysprep.exe</userinput> is <b outputclass="bold">not possible</b>. Instead the following paths are used, based on the Windows release:</p>
      <ul>
        <li>
          <p><filepath>C:\sysprep\sysprep.exe</filepath> for Windows XP and earlier</p>
        </li>
        <li>
          <p><filepath>%WINDIR%\System32\sysprep\sysprep.exe</filepath> for Windows Vista and later</p>
        </li>
      </ul>
      <p>The Guest Additions will automatically use the appropriate path to execute the system preparation tool.</p>
    </note>
  </body>
  
</topic>
