Imaging causes constant reboot loop

Hello everyone,

I am new to using HP / Altiris rapid deploy and have inherited a functioning console running v6.8 from someone who is no longer with our company. I have extensive experience imaging hard drives using Ghost but just need to learn Altiris's process for imaging. My goal is to learn to create an image of a server to use incase that particular server crashed, not an image to be deployed to numerous servers.

After reading manuals and browsing forums my first attempt to create an image from a test server was successful, but put the server (an HP Proliant DL360 G5 running Windows Server 2003 Standard edtion) into a constant reboot loop after creating the image. The only way to cure the loop was to put a base deployment image that was created by my predecessor onto the server. Also if I attempted to restore the image that I created, the server again went into a constant loop after receiving the image.

I searched the HP forums for constant reboot and the response that came closest to what I needed mentioned renaming file extension on a .manifest file, but I found that the file mentioned in the article already had the name that was suggested.

I compared the job I created to capture the image vs. the jobs created by my predecessor and found the only difference to be that my predecessor sysprep-ed the images while I did not. When I sysprep-ed my images the reboot cycle did not occur.

Which finally leads me to my questions:

1. Why does Altiris require an image to be sysprep-ed in order to prevent a constant reboot cycle and will I need to sysprep all images I create?

AND..

2. Does restoring a sysprep-ed image onto the server it was made from adversely affect the software running on the server, e.g. does the software that was running on the software care about such things as a different SID associated with the server? From what I have read the answer should be no, but I was hoping to get some validation one way or the other.

I apologize if I have gone on a bit, but just wanted to be as complete as possible.

Any thoughts / suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Steve