Sunday, January 25, 2015

usb - Bypassing user account setup in windows 7

Edit: Solved! I made a fresh drive clone, ran sysprep /audit /generalize /shutdown, swapped to the target system, booting into windows 10 and used regedit to load the win7 software hive, set registry values for automatic login and disabled UAC, dropped the driver installers into Roaming/Microsoft/Windows/StartMenu/Programs/Startup and booted it. Worked perfectly.


What would be the easiest way to automatically bypass the setup (timezone, location, create user ect) that takes place after a windows installation, on a computer that has no functional input devices?


So far i have tried a boot-time scheduled task to install USB drivers (which does nothing as far as i can tell), an answer file (Autounattend.xml, in C:/ - also does nothing) and dism from a functional windows 10 OS on the same drive (to install USB drivers - it 'successfully' installed the drives and made the target OS unbootable).


The backstory is i need to move an old, heavily used windows 7 system (coming from intel core second gen) to a ryzen system. Reinstallation is not an option.


I made a clone of the OS drive, booted it, used sysprep with /oobe /generalize and swapped the drive to the new machine. It boots fine, but gets stuck on setup. If i can get past setup, the USB drivers will be automatically installed.


Would any of the following be possible and more/less likely to work:


A; Creating a custom windows service to install the drivers, and moving it to the target system.


B; Preparing a new drive in a way that will skip the user creation, with an answer file or other method. sysprep documentation seems very limited.


C; Installing the correct drivers from windows 10 or winPE.


I have a windows 7 installation media USB, more USB drives, functional windows 10 and ubuntu on the target computer, and several other functional computers. The target computer has no functional network connection or access to a PS/2 keyboard.

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