26 January 2012

Home » » "The Computer Restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error" during sysprep

"The Computer Restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error" during sysprep

  Thursday, January 26, 2012    68 comments
The error "The Computer Restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error" is an annoying error that completely stops the sysprep setup process. The system does not need to be rebuilt. The issue that caused it on one of the machines we encountered this on was due to the fact that some profiles had been deleted from the file structure, but the registry entries were left in tact. In order to fix this issue, you will need to change the registry key HKLM/SYSTEM/SETUP/STATUS/ChildCompletion Setup.exe from 1 to 3. This will allow the sysprep process to complete. The drivers will not be installed and likely, the system will not be joined to a domain, if applicable. The main thing is that the OS can now be booted up and logged into. Here is the contents of a reg file that will change it for you.

In order to get to the registry, when the above listed error appears, hit Shift-F10. This will bring up a command prompt window. Type regedit and then make the registry change. At that point, reboot the machine and it should boot up into Windows 7.

NOTE: This was performed on a Windows 7 64-bit machine. Per a reply to this blog, it was also confirmed to work on Windows Server 2008.

 Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00  
 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\Status\ChildCompletion]  
 "setup.exe"=dword:00000003

68 comments:

  1. EliseFebruary 1, 2012 at 10:44 AM

    We received the same error on one of our machines, but, in our case, it was due to bad memory.

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  2. Mick PletcherFebruary 20, 2012 at 1:15 AM

    Thanks for the info!

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  3. TongSamaFebruary 25, 2012 at 4:57 PM

    This helped me in a virtual lab test environment. I sysprepped a computer that was on a domain and it does this sysprep loop when loading up. I will try this on the laptop with the issue on Monday.

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  4. Mick PletcherFebruary 27, 2012 at 6:09 PM

    Did this work for you today?

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  5. TongSamaMarch 3, 2012 at 8:16 PM

    Ahh, unfortunately the production laptop's orig hard drive got formatted when the tech used image software to "clone" to the new laptop. And the new laptop received a reinstall since I didn't think an answer existed because I could not find a solution 3 months ago. Oh well, I can, however, duplicate this problem by sysprepping a computer joined to the domain. Then I force restart while sysprep is setting up the registry on first boot. The VM would go into this loop.

    I found this article by searching "Computer Restarted unexpectedly sysprep". But it seems this solution applies to failed windows 7 installs too.

    Side note to others: Shift + f10 to open up command prompt and open regedit when you see this error message.

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  6. Willis DrummondMarch 6, 2012 at 12:57 PM

    Hello. This advice solved my problem. Many thanks!

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  7. Jonny JonesMarch 23, 2012 at 4:55 AM

    This has solved my problem with start up of a new laptop. Thanks a million!

    ReplyDelete
  8. GregocamMay 15, 2012 at 1:13 PM

    Only solution on the net! but correct! Thank you a 1000-times!

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  9. Cristiano PaluffiMay 25, 2012 at 3:26 AM

    Thank you for your post, I used your suggestion on Windows Server 2008 R2 and it worked.
    Kind Regards,
    Cristiano

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mick PletcherMay 26, 2012 at 9:07 PM

      Thanks for confirming this works on Server 2008! I will update the blog to reflect this.

      Delete
  10. Paul JonesMay 25, 2012 at 2:31 PM

    Funny enough, this is the second time I've fallen into this trap. Win7 setup, by default, disables the Administrator account, and has you set up another administrative account during first install. to keep things clean, and to take advantage of the bit of sysprep that copies the administrator account to the default account, I always remove this account, and use local administrator to set the machine up before pulling an image to deploy. Well, removing that dummy account causes the mini-setup to fail upon pulling and booting the image unless you do some registry cleanup that Win7 can't be arsed to do itself. This tip helped me save a re-install by getting me back into the install so I could re-sysprep it after I cleaned things up. Thanks!

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  11. AnonymousJune 12, 2012 at 4:00 AM

    Thanks for the solution

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  12. AnonymousJune 21, 2012 at 6:48 AM

    Thank you! After a week of searching the web and trying things that didn't work I finally stumbled upon this post and it WORKED!!!

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  13. AnonymousJuly 10, 2012 at 12:56 PM

    Sooo thankful for this solution. Saved me today!

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  14. D-iTJuly 24, 2012 at 4:01 AM

    Nice one Mick, I've just spend a day or two creating a new custom image for my company and thought all my hard had gone to waste - but with your advice I can now get windows 7 to boot and can recify this problem and re-sysprep. Thanks

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  15. AnonymousJuly 26, 2012 at 2:58 AM

    You have saved me 2 days work after a failed sysprep! Thank-you very much

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  16. lolJuly 30, 2012 at 4:35 PM

    Saved me 8 hours of image build time. Your my new hero.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Christopher AbayanAugust 12, 2012 at 7:23 AM

    i encountered the same error in vista and this works... thanks a lot dude

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  18. AnonymousAugust 14, 2012 at 8:58 AM

    Thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks and thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  19. AnonymousAugust 16, 2012 at 10:42 AM

    You just saved me from rebuilding my sysprep'd image! Thank you!!

    ReplyDelete
  20. UnknownAugust 22, 2012 at 6:52 AM

    Thanks alot for this post, it worked a treat on a Sony laptop I have imaged.

    However, I decided to make this registry change in the image's registry hive directly, so we don't have to repeat this process everytime we use the image, and I get an error message coming back saying "Unable to make registry changes", and the install reverts all changes. Any suggestions?

    ReplyDelete
  21. AnonymousSeptember 11, 2012 at 6:42 AM

    Working for a company that sells computers/laptops i had a lot of machines with this problem and never could figure out what was causing it.
    Restoring/reinstalling was the only option but now finaly... Thanks for sharing the solution.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Andrew R. MillerSeptember 18, 2012 at 1:01 AM

    I LOVE YOU

    ReplyDelete
  23. rameshmichaelsSeptember 24, 2012 at 12:17 PM

    Thanks a lot brother...
    U saved a lot of time.. and just blew me into
    the safe zone... thanks a lot .

    ReplyDelete
  24. AnonymousSeptember 25, 2012 at 11:43 PM

    This solution works...!!!!
    Thanks a lot bro...Nice job...!!!

    ReplyDelete
  25. AnonymousOctober 2, 2012 at 5:08 PM

    awsome worked great!!

    ReplyDelete
  26. AndyOctober 3, 2012 at 10:53 AM

    It works! This was very helpful. Props to the author. Thanks a ton!

    ReplyDelete
  27. AnonymousOctober 4, 2012 at 9:23 AM

    Thanks worked for me on Windows 7 :-)

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  28. AnonymousOctober 8, 2012 at 8:26 AM

    Thanks worked for me as well.

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  29. AnonymousOctober 13, 2012 at 5:30 AM

    After two days I finally got it to work without reinstalling my Windows Server 2008 SP2! You're my personal hero! Thank you very much! I love you!

    ReplyDelete
  30. AnonymousOctober 13, 2012 at 5:31 AM

    After two days I finally got it to work without reinstalling my Windows Server 2008 SP2! You're my personal hero! Thank you very much! I love you!

    ReplyDelete
  31. nick pOctober 15, 2012 at 7:38 PM

    add one more satisfied customer. Something had corrupted my current Windows 7 install and while trying to reinstall from the recovery DVDs I encountered that issue.
    Thank you very much!

    ReplyDelete
  32. AnonymousNovember 2, 2012 at 7:06 PM

    Thanks for posting this! worked like a charm!

    ReplyDelete
  33. AnonymousNovember 9, 2012 at 9:55 PM

    Thanks bro u do not know how much he helped me thaaaanx man

    ReplyDelete
  34. AnonymousNovember 11, 2012 at 11:04 AM

    Thank you Mick, it worked for Vista too. I had the problem when I wanted a factory restore.

    ReplyDelete
  35. AnonymousNovember 19, 2012 at 9:14 AM

    Thanks! Thanks! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  36. AnonymousNovember 20, 2012 at 4:59 PM

    Hi.... im having the same error but cant find the path to change.... all my machine goes up to is setup .....theres no childcompletion in my path .....please help

    ReplyDelete
  37. Mick PletcherNovember 21, 2012 at 12:47 PM

    If it is getting stuck at the setup, then I would mount the drive onto a working machine and then edit the registry from there. After editing the registry, put the HDD back into the system you were sysprepping it on and restart it. See if that corrects the issue.

    ReplyDelete
  38. AnonymousNovember 30, 2012 at 3:53 AM

    You seem to have nailed the problem!
    Mick Pletcher you are a star!
    I was about to go nuts....now its installing and I am so far happy as a bee!
    Thank you very much!!!

    ReplyDelete
  39. AnonymousNovember 30, 2012 at 8:50 AM

    Worked for me too on a new machined that I received with this issue on. After changing the registry to 3, as advised here, I restarted, and got a new error: WinSAT.exe - Bad Image. C:\windows\system32\NV\igdum64.dll is either not designed to use on windows or it contains an error. So I got worried and changed the registry back straight away and restarted the computer by holding the power button. It came back with the same error, so I immediately went back to the registry and it was still 3 (it did not get changed back to 1 after all). So I changed it to 1 again and clicked OK on the error box a few times now instead of shutting the laptop down. I was surprised when I saw that windows ran successfully! Please note that this time I had managed to change the registry back to 1, and it continues at 1 but works fine. Any ideas why this is? Thanks very much for the help!!!!

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  40. AnonymousJanuary 17, 2013 at 9:34 PM

    Thanks so much it worked!

    ReplyDelete
  41. AnonymousJanuary 23, 2013 at 8:12 AM

    Thanks, it works great!
    Vista ...

    ReplyDelete
  42. AnonymousJanuary 24, 2013 at 5:48 PM

    Omg thank you soo much I thought I lost my computer but you saved it thank you so much for saving my pc

    ReplyDelete
  43. AnonymousFebruary 5, 2013 at 3:48 AM

    Antivirus software (McAffee VirusScan) must be disabled or uninstalled before SYSPREP. Check antivirus log file.

    ReplyDelete
  44. AnonymousFebruary 5, 2013 at 10:41 PM

    Worked for installing Windows 8.

    Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  45. AnonymousFebruary 8, 2013 at 1:34 AM

    i get error code 0xc0000001

    ReplyDelete
  46. AnonymousFebruary 18, 2013 at 11:24 PM

    Yup worked for W7 and W8

    ReplyDelete
  47. AnonymousFebruary 19, 2013 at 2:29 PM

    Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise.
    %insert thumbs up emoticon here%

    ReplyDelete
  48. Carlos GomezMarch 1, 2013 at 2:43 AM

    Windows 7 Professional x86 (32-bits)
    THIS WORKS!!!!

    I sysprep my Windows OS from my MAC LAPTOP, and cloned it to a separate HDD
    First boot on a new (regular windows laptop), got BSOD 0x000007d, restarted and then sysprep failed. I then changed the value above and it finished the sysprep.

    ReplyDelete
  49. AnonymousMarch 9, 2013 at 8:05 AM

    Thank you very very much... It worked on my Win 8 pro with media centre x64.....
    Thanks Again :D

    ReplyDelete
  50. AnonymousMarch 10, 2013 at 11:47 AM

    Thank you! Your solution saved my prob with Windows7 Home Premium. However, you didn't explain the step after reboot. After starting the Windows successfully, I was prompted to a screen 'system preparation tool' hardware independence and clean up

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  51. AnonymousMarch 18, 2013 at 4:26 PM

    thankx!!!
    this managed to solve my prob, for cloning my system with new m/b, cpu ..

    ReplyDelete
  52. AnonymousMay 16, 2013 at 12:11 PM

    Woo Hoo. This resoved the issues I had restoreing a customer's Ghost image to VM using ghost's deployanywhere to retarget the OS (to deal with the change of hardware) it got hung up at this step and the reg key worked :) thanks so much

    ReplyDelete
  53. Gigih WahyudiMay 22, 2013 at 5:18 PM

    SOLVED MY PROBLEM AFTER 5 MONTH..

    HUGE THANKS :D

    ReplyDelete
  54. UnknownJuly 25, 2013 at 5:38 AM

    Very informative and well written post! Quite interesting and nice topic chosen for the post.

    HP - Pavilion 17.3" Refurbished Laptop - 4GB Memory - 500GB Hard Drive - Sparkling Black

    ReplyDelete
  55. AnonymousAugust 16, 2013 at 3:34 AM

    Thank you! Helped me meet a deadline! much appreciated!

    ReplyDelete
  56. AnonymousSeptember 25, 2013 at 7:04 AM

    Can confirm that this also works on Server 2012!
    Thankyou! Saved my day!!

    ReplyDelete
  57. UnknownDecember 25, 2013 at 11:39 PM

    I Love You
    THANK YOU , YOU SAVED ME!!

    ReplyDelete
  58. AnonymousMay 12, 2014 at 6:21 AM

    I got this error when i wanted to restore a system that i just syspred. The problem was that the system drive (boot drive) received the letter c and the windows drive received the drive h. Well i fixed it so that i edited the registry
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
    removed the drive C and renamed the windows drive c
    i also edited the
    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\Status\ChildCompletion] setup key to 2 ;)

    ReplyDelete
  59. AnonymousMay 12, 2014 at 7:50 AM

    http://shubell.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/windows-vista-sysprep-multiple-partitions/

    ReplyDelete
  60. AnonymousSeptember 11, 2014 at 6:26 AM

    Hello. This advice solved my problem. Many thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  61. AnonymousSeptember 11, 2014 at 11:20 AM

    It also works on windows 2012 servers

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  62. AnonymousOctober 1, 2014 at 11:43 AM

    This also helped me with a Windows 2012 R2 server in place upgrade. Thank you SO much for this post!

    ReplyDelete
  63. AnonymousJanuary 14, 2015 at 5:10 PM

    This helped me with a very stressful stage, thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  64. AnonymousJanuary 27, 2015 at 5:33 PM

    You are the best. Thank you sooooooo much. AHHHHHHHH

    ReplyDelete
  65. AnonymousMarch 17, 2015 at 11:59 AM

    Get this same error, but the solution does not work for me, as I only have this in the reg settings: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup Do not have the status folder... Any ideas.

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  66. AnonymousOctober 15, 2015 at 3:57 PM

    confirmed working on win10

    many thanks

    ReplyDelete
  67. AnonymousMarch 25, 2019 at 9:13 AM

    doesn't work, the registry key your supposed to change, isn't even in the registry, so how can i change it. Please answer this. thanks.

    ReplyDelete