sysprep unable to change admin password

wds, mdt2010, windows xp

Using wds and lite touch i was getting the following error after syspreping my machines: setup was unable to change the password for user account administrator


Basically I built the image before hand and I had the admin password coded in the image. For some reason it didnt like this. I tried several ways and the only fix I found was to recreate my image without having an admin password. Basically i reset the password to blank..

From there after booting to lite touch and imaging, after it reboots it goes through with changing the admin password. I also have encrypted the password in my sysprep.inf. I read somewhere that encryption was causeing the error but tried both ways.


summary: create admin account with no password before sysprep.