Warning: Windows customization resources were not found on this server

Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:57:52 AM

I just got VMWare ESX 3.5 loaded up and I went to create a new Virtual Machine from a template.  I wanted to customize this VM, but the customization options were not available and it reported "Warning: Windows customization resources were not found on this server".  Googling around the web, and reading the VMWare documentation, everything said to extract SysPrep 1.1 into the “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep\1.1” folder.  I did this, no luck.  I tried to extract the contents of the tools folder only into the root of this directory, no luck.  I tried extracting them to the “\sysprep\xp” folder, no luck.

After a bit of pondering and gluing some hair back onto my scalp I thought.  Why not just grab them from the XP CD and see if that works.  I also remembered that there were some significant changes to SysPrep for Windows XP.

Here’s how I fixed it:
Copy the contents of “XP CD\SUPPORT\TOOLS\DEPLOY.CAB” into the folder “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep\xp” on your Virtual Center server.  Everything should be working now.

Good luck!