After deploying a Server 2012 R2 from a template, the VMware guest customization (sysprep) fails to start.


In the events (vSphere Web Client 5.5/VM/Monitor/Events) of the new deployed VM I found the following error:


“An error occurred while customizing <VM>. Customization log located at C:\Windows\Temp\vmware-imc\ <NO LOG> in the guest OS.”


Unfortunately there was really no log in the given path…


As I have used the template several times before, I checked the history of the template. Beside a number of new windows patches the last change was an upgrade of the VMware Tools.


So I decided to uninstall the VMware tools and install them completely new.

After this the guest customization was working as expected!