


For more information about issues that might occur if you clone an installation of Windows 8 or of Windows Server 2012, go to the Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 specific information section. Because the SID identifies both the computer or domain and the user, unique SIDs are necessary to maintain support for current and future programs.

For removable media, a duplicate SID might give an account access to files even though NTFS permissions for the account specifically deny access to those files. S-1-5-21-191058668-193157475-1542849698-1002 User 3Ĭloning or duplicating an installation without taking the recommended steps could lead to duplicate SIDs. Only the last four digits are incremented as new accounts are added. The following example displays the SIDs for four local user accounts. The computer SID is concatenated together with the Relative ID (RID) of the account to create the account's unique identifier. The computer SID is the prefix of the user account and group account SIDs that are created on the computer. During installation of Windows, a computer SID is computed to contain a statistically unique 96-bit number. Sysprep is responsible for removing system-specific data from Windows, such as the Computer SID. For later versions of Windows, Sysprep is included with the operating system, and Sysprep is located in the folder: %windir%\system32\sysprep.

For Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003, Sysprep is included with the latest service pack Deploy.cab. Sysprep prepares an installation of Microsoft Windows for duplication, auditing, and customer delivery. When you deploy a duplicated or imaged Windows installation, it is required that the System Preparation (Sysprep) tool is used before the capture of the image. This article describes the SID and supported methods for cloning or duplicating a Windows installation.Īpplies to: Windows 10, version 2004, Windows 10, version 1909, Windows 10, version 1903, Windows 10, version 1809, Windows 7 Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2 Original KB number: 314828 Summary The Microsoft policy for disk duplication of Windows installations
