If you try to sysprep a Vista reference system and get this error:

”A fatal error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine.”

then you should check your Setupact.log file and see if you can find the following line:

0×80070020 / ERROR_SHARING_VIOLATION

If this line is present in the log file, then sysprep is failing because MSDTC is trying to reset its log but sysprep has locked the log for exclusive access. The only solution for this at present is to contact Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) for a hotfix.