Generate a new SID on Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7
February 27, 2012 11 Comments
With the NewSID tool no longer supported by Microsoft for more recent versions of Windows, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to generate a new SID on a Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7 computer, and wonder which tool you need to use. I myself have run across an issue in the past in our development environment where duplicate SIDs caused a problem. Care needs to be taken when cloning Windows virtual machines, particularly if they will later be used as domain controllers.
In order to avoid any issues like this, the new preferred method to set a new SID on a Windows machine is to use Sysprep. Before running Sysprep, you may wish to verify the current SID on the sytem that you wish to modify. This can easily be done by running the psgetsid utility, which is part of the excellent Pstools developed by Mark Russinovich. The output of the psgetsid command can be seen below, showing the current machine SID:
Output of psgetsid before running Sysprep on Windows Server 2008 R2
Next you can sysprep by running the following command:
C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exe
- Running Sysprep
Choose settings for the System Preparation Tool
The Sysprep process will take a few minutes to run, and will automatically reboot the system if you chose to do so. On reboot, the following screen will be displayed. Click ‘Next’ to continue:
Click next to continue the Sysprep process
After the sysprep process is complete, you can run psgetsid again to verify that a new SID has been generated for this computer:
Output of psgetsid after running Sysprep on Windows Server 2008 R2
oasysadmin 
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please remember there is limited number of times you can run sysprep (I think three) – hope you don’t find the hard way (e.g. at the end of making this ‘perfect image’ 😉
Thanks for the Post. It saved my day :).
Vivek
Does sysprep change the sid after you run it or it will generate one on reboot?
It’s very important to check the “Generalize” option. Without the “Generalize” option, “SID” is unchanged. Here is a lab that explains:
http://www.sysadmit.com/2014/11/windows-sysprep-sid.html
Thank you friend..it worked for me…great work… appreciate for sharing this post
I have a machine that I need to change the SID due to a third party software that is recognizing two machines as the same. If I run sysprep on an established machine…is that going to break the installed software?
It shouldn’t do
It should be pointed out that sysprep puts the machine back into plug-and-play driver mode, so any drivers that were installed prior to sysprep need to be re-executed. Very irritating.
I too have been using this method many times on virtual machines, so thank you.