Microsoft offers a system preparation tool called Sysprep, to prepare a Windows system for deployment or redistribution. For most Windows versions, Sysprep is included in a default installation. Sysprep mainly consists of an executable called sysprep.exe which is invoked by the user to put the Windows installation into preparation mode.

The Guest Additions offer a way to launch a system preparation on the guest operating system in an automated way, controlled from the host system. See Guest Control of Applications for details of how to use this feature with the special identifier sysprep as the program to execute, along with the user name sysprep and password sysprep for the credentials. Sysprep is then started with the required system rights.