Hi , This is because that you are attempting to open the file with a 32 bit editor and running into Windows file redirection. On 64 bit Windows the 64 bit system directory is C:\Windows\System32 while the 32 bit system directory is C:\Windows\SysWOW64. When a 32 bit application requests C:\Windows\System32 Windows redirects the request to C:\Windows\SysWOW64. If you use a 32 bit application to open the XML file in C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep or C:\Windows\System32, it will be redirected to C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Sysprep or C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and fails to find the file, since it doesn't exist. Thus, you are able to open the file in the Internet Explorer (64-bit) but not in the 32 bit. The reason it opens fine when you rename it to .txt is that it ends up opening in a 64 bit copy of notepad.

Hi all, I was about to sysprep my Windows7 SP1 machine, beforehand I tried to edit the unattend.xml doc located at C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep and got the following error: "Windows cannot find C:\Windows\System32\sysprep\unattend.xml. Make sure you typed the name correctly, then try again" If I copy the xml doc to the desktop, I can edit it fine, it even edits fine in C:\ or C:\Windows, but the second I put an XML doc in the System32 folder (or one of its subfolders), I can't open it. The problem only seems to affect XML docs, if I change it to .txt, it opens fine. I'm stumped, any ideas?