Upgraded to 8.1 w/o Microsoft Account, stuck in sysprep

Redmage913

New Member
Messages
11
Greetings,

I'm a repair technician, and I'm working on a Toshiba L75D-A7283. Upon checkin, symptoms were booting up to a black screen to log in, then a black screen with cursor after that. Fixed that with a system restore point and a virus removal.My coworker upgraded the machine to 8.1 over the weekend without a Microsoft Account. When it failed, he put the machine into audit mode, I'm guessing so that we could have updates finished and have the system set up with a Microsoft Account when the customer came back in.

However, we can't get it out of audit mode. We've tried several things, including this:Sysprep Error with windows 8.1 At the setupact log, the error that presents is:
spopk.dll: Sysprep will not run on an upgraded OS. You can only run Sysprep on a custom (clean) install version of Windows.

At that point the sysprep fails, and I'm stuck in audit mode after a restart. I don't know how to get this machine back to vanilla Windows 8 without a full reinstall. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Red
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Professional
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Antec Lanboy
    CPU
    Intel Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4.2GHz
    Motherboard
    Asus
    Memory
    16GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon HD6870
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Trend Micro Maximum
An update: I just tried running a refresh, and it immediately gave the "There was a problem refreshing your PC" message. In the Problem Signature, gave these details:

Problem Event Name: PushButtonResetFailures_Windows8
Problem Signature 01: 1
Problem Signature 02: 1
Problem Signature 03: 3
Problem Signature 04: 1
OS Version: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.768.101
Locale ID: 1033

I have no ideas past performing a full reinstall, I'm guessing from recovery partition or disc.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Professional
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Antec Lanboy
    CPU
    Intel Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4.2GHz
    Motherboard
    Asus
    Memory
    16GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon HD6870
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Trend Micro Maximum
This is going to sound weird if not ridiculous, but it started up normally this morning and i was able to log into the customer's account without any issues. It's in 8.1, and is reported as activated? I was the last person to work on this, and when i left it, it was stuck in Administrator with sysprep coming up every boot...

Therefore, lastof, I didn't get a chance to run sysprep /oobe. Now I'm worried that this isn't gonna stick. I'm gonna restart it about ten times and get a cramp from my fingers being crossed so long...
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Professional
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Antec Lanboy
    CPU
    Intel Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4.2GHz
    Motherboard
    Asus
    Memory
    16GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon HD6870
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Trend Micro Maximum
Update: Okay, so, I restarted the machine, and it went into built-in Administrator. When doing a power cycle, it allows me to log into the user account. Weird...
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Professional
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Antec Lanboy
    CPU
    Intel Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4.2GHz
    Motherboard
    Asus
    Memory
    16GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon HD6870
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Trend Micro Maximum
So you will know, I am not one of those folks who run sysprep and have very little experience with it. But have you checked to see if any settings in the BCD store might be changed to correct the problem?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown
    CPU
    i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77 -v Pro, Z87-Expert
    Memory
    16 G
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GTX 680 Classified (2)
    Hard Drives
    Kingston SSD 240 GB
Just rebuilt the BCD in case there were any changes. Everything looked normal, it now definitely is, and the same issue is continuing.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Professional
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Antec Lanboy
    CPU
    Intel Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4.2GHz
    Motherboard
    Asus
    Memory
    16GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon HD6870
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Trend Micro Maximum
Red,

I'm a little confused by your last sentence there, what do you mean by 'the same issue is continuing'? After your restart-marathon, is everything ok?

I believe if you do a registry search for imagestate, the first HKLM hit you get will tell you what mode the computer is booting to - there should be a value in there for 'Image complete' or something similar (if everything's ok, and sysprep was able to properly finish).
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win8 Pro
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