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    How to change SID on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 using sysprep?


     

    sysprep3 In last post I described how to check SID on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, today I’ll describe you how to change SID on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 using sysprep. I see many of you are looking how to change SID using NewSID, but New SID is not officially supported by Microsoft. You could use NewSID on Windows Server 2008, but when you try to use it on Windows Server 2008 R2 it won’t work, actually, it will “destroy” operating system. I didn’t test it on Windows 7, but still my advice is to use sysprep. Changing SID using sysprep is also very simple, just follow few steps as described below…

    I tested sysprep on Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter edition, but same steps apply for Windows7 also.

    First, click to Start->Run, type sysprep and press OK.

    sysprep1

     

    This will open sysprep folder which is located in c:\Windows\System32. Open sysprep application.

    sysprep2

     

    This will open System Preparation Tool 3.14 window. As a System Cleanup Action select Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE). Important: select Generalize if you want to change SID, it’s not selected by default. As Shutdown Options select Reboot.

    sysprep3

     

    It will take some time for sysprep to finish, so grab a cup of coffee and wait.

    sysprep4

     

    After rebooting you’ll have to enter some data, for example, Country or region, Time and currency and Keyboard input.

    sysprep5

     

    Also, you’ll have to accept EULA. And that’s it. After booting, in Server Manager you’ll see that everything is changed, if you had some settings set now they’re changed.

    sysprep6

     

    Now you can again use PsGetSid to check that your OS has new SID.

    Do you have some experiences with sysprep? Any advices?

     


     

    By Ilija Brajkovic | September 17, 2009
    Tags: , , , , , ,
    Category: R2 | Comments
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    • Netmon1
      Thank you, I destroyed a VM by using NewSID, thankfully I had a snapshot I was able to restore to. Doing it this way resolved a SID issue due to me cloning in ESXi since I did not have vCenter Server.
    • Chax
      Thank you.
    • Karthikeyan Sundaram
      Hey Thanks for your Information Mr.
    • Shady ElAsra
      I have found your post after a guy from Microsoft sent me the NewSid tool to use with Server 2008 R2 and it kept loading forever. I tried your way, and it worked. Thanks.
    • mismis
      I want to change/set a specific SID on Windows 7 x64 computer.
      You said a guy from microsoft sent you the newSID tool to use with Server 2k8 R2, probably works with 7even. Could you please send me
      this new version of newsid tool?
      Thx
    • Josh Schaa
      Hey I just ran newsid tool on Windows 7 Ent. that was a imaged hdd. It ruined the install, currently reimaging the machine now. Same with the steps here on the Win 7 Ent. I have tried twice, currently reimaging the sysprep machine for the second time.
    • Mac
      I've just run sysprep sucessfully on a couple of Win7 64-bit Enterprise machines. I've installed Win7 from scratch on the first machine. Then I run sysprep. After reboot, I made an image. I restored the image on multiple machines, same hardware of course. They all boot up nicely, asking me to give the machine a new name and a new user. A little weird thing is that Win7 re-scans all the hardware and re-installs all the drivers from the scratch. It basically did that okay, except that the VGA driver did not get recognized, so on all machines I had to re-install the VGA driver manually.

      Hope this helps.
    • AFX01
      how can i set mannualy the sid? i on't want a random sid
    • I'm not sure you can do it, and I don't see any reason why you want to do it. :-)
    • afx01
      manually*
    • Which way did I go?
      You can't run NewSID on a Windows Server 2008 machine that's been upgraded to R2 (destroys machine). Sysprep only supports clean installations and therefore, you can't use sysprep to change the SID on the same machine. That pretty much leaves you with nothing..
    • Sardaukarz
      NewSID destroyed my Windows 7 installation. I didn't try to see why and how I will try your method tomorrow. Thnkz
    • ilijabrajkovic
      Sorry to hear that. :-(

      Btw, there is no need to change SIDs, just refer to this article: http://www.brajkovic.info/windows-server-2008/t... .
    • Jason L.
      I ran sysprep on a Win7 machine as discribed here and the system will not boot into Windows any more. The boot manager comes up every boot and says that "a required device is inaccessible". Then when telling it to repair or continue booting it just reboots itself into goes back to this error. Constant loop. Any suggestions?
    • ilijabrajkovic
      Hi Jason, I don't know what's going on with sysprep on Windows7. I will definitely have to try it on some virtual Windows 7 and come up with a new post about it.
    • Hi Rakesh,

      yes, that's normal.

      Ilija
    • Glenn
      I tried running sysprep on a windows 7 pro installation.
      Now I cant boot the system. It just reboots over and over again.
      Windows is loading for a couple of seconds, then it reboots.
    • ilijabrajkovic
      I have never tried sysprep on Windows 7, and I can't figure out why you have those problems :-(.
    • Rakesh
      We tried using sysprep on Windows 2008 R2 core installation from foler c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe. After reboot , we were not prompted to input any data like computer name,etc.

      Can anyone sugget if this is normal.
    • Hi Chris,

      I don't know why it's not supported and why Microsoft is forcing sysprep. I think Mark Russinovich would be the right person to ask that question :-).
      Of course, if I find some information about other possible ways to change SID, I'll write a post about it.

      Thank you for your comment.

      Ilija
    • Chris Stewart
      I was reading over this and I was wondering if windows 7 will ever allow you to beable to use newsid. I work at a school and it is much easier to do that instead of this sysprep b/c it takes too long and we have over 500 computers on the server that eventually want to switch them over to windows 7. If you know anything about this. Maybe there is a setting on the computer you can change so that it can run that would also be nice too. Please let me know whenever you get a chance to e-mail me back I would greatly appreciate it.
    • haas
      You only can sysprep a windows 7 (Enterprise Edition) 3 times, after this its fatal error while syspreping
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