Windows – How to determine sysprep status

From : Sysprep Command-Line Syntax

/generalize Prepares the Windows installation to be imaged. If this option is specified, all unique system information is removed from the Windows installation. The security ID (SID) resets, any system restore points are cleared, and event logs are deleted.

The next time the computer starts, the specialize configuration pass runs. A new security ID (SID) is created, and the clock for Windows activation resets, if the clock has not already been reset three times.

This means on the next reboot (after deployment!) your SID will reset. Your machines will get 10 different SID's, yes.

There are multiple kinds of SID's. Users have SID's, Machine's have SID's, there are local SID's, Domain SID's, and there are "special" SID's, but the SID's you are talking about (MachineSID) is the same in sysprep and NewSID (Machine SID)

So I managed to fix this by tinkering a bit with the Appx .NET package. I had a second user that was created during setup on VMware. "Admin" and "Administrator" were on the system. So I logged into "Admin" and ran:

Remove-AppxPackage "Microsoft.NET.Native.Runtime.1.0_1.0.22929.0_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe"

I was then confronted with an error stating that "Microsoft.Skype" is using this .NET Runtime and removing the .NET package was not possible.

I had to quickly search for the correct package that this error was referring to by issuing the Powershell command:

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Select-String "Microsoft.Skype"

It then showed a single Microsoft.Skype Appx Package!

I then removed the "Microsoft.Skype" Appx Package and proceeded to run the above command, it worked!

My next step was to do the same on "Administrator". So I did the above and ran Sysprep again, boom! It works. Hopefully this helps someone in the future. :)

TL;DR:

1. Attempt to remove Appx package on any other user except the built-in Administrator, this should throw an error/conflict with another App;
2. Search for the App using the above Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers command
3. Remove the conflicting application to the be able to remove the primary issue-raising application;
4. Do this for all users, including the built-in Administrator; and
5. Sysprep should work again.