Packer – AWS Windows 2016 SysPrep returns exit code 1

I know this question is very old, but after 2hrs of trying to find the "right" sysprep version, I stumbled on the answer in a more obscure forum so I wanted to update this thread with the answer for other lost souls.

I had the same issue with one of our servers that we've (maybe overly) hardened so that the Server service was Disabled. I set the Server service to Manual and started it, then ran Sysprep and it worked fine. I guess the Server service provides the OS version to sysprep, and it fails because it cannot determine the version with the service disabled. Microsoft could have provided a more helpful error message (like "cannot determine OS version"). Hope this helps someone!

I'm fairly certain you can't manage the My Documents folder that way. You'll need to either edit the local security policy/local group policy, build a script to re-map it, or use Group Policy for after the computer is set up and joined to the domain.

In certain instances, where some networks don't have Active Directory to use Group Policy, using the local group policy should work.

Here's an example

More info