Sysprep: "You must be an administrator"

Question

I am trying to sysprep a VM running Server 2012 R2. When I run sysprep.exe as an administrator I get the following modal:

---------------------------
System Preparation Tool 3.14
---------------------------
You must be an administrator to run this application.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

If I click OK, sysprep exits.

I am 100% administrator and I 100% am executing it in admin mode. I've tried Right Click -> Run As Administrator and running from an admin Command Prompt.

How do I get sysprep.exe to run?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 13 '15 at 15:20

This was due to incorrectly configured group policy. To determine this, I used this Microsoft KB article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/270032 and checked each permission with RSoP. It turns out the "Administrators" group was removed from these policies. Adding them back allowed sysprep to run.

Sysprep: "You must be an administrator"

1 Answers1