When powering on a machine with a Syspreped image for the first time, Windows hangs on the startup splash:

It will remain at this screen for hours. Once you restart the machine sysprep finishes running and boots into Windows. Is this an issue with my unattend file, or Windows 8?

I've gotten a similar result when doing a plain DVD install with and without unattend.xml so I call shenanigans on the install process itself.

I guess you could try the log files and see if anything pops out.  

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766514%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

Sysprep Log Files

Sysprep logs Windows setup actions in different directories, depending on the configuration pass. Because the generalize pass deletes certain Windows Setup log files, Sysprep logs generalize actions outside the standard Windows Setup log files. The following table shows the different log file locations that are used by Sysprep.

 

Item	Log Path
generalize	%WINDIR%\System32\Sysprep\Panther
specialize	%WINDIR%\Panther\
Unattended Windows setup actions	%WINDIR%\Panther\Unattendgc

I've gotten a similar result when doing a plain DVD install with and without unattend.xml so I call shenanigans on the install process itself.

Did you have any luck getting it installed?

Not sure if it applies but:

.. I tried doing a unattended installation from a Virtual VMWARE environment. after doing the SYSPREP(so I could later move this preconfigured installation to a physical machine), I keep getting this loop or an error saying windows 8 "windows could not finish configuring the system ..."  error 0x8007139F

I found that; after sysprep.. it somehow resets the default partition information (from device0 hdd0 partition0 to device0 hdd0 partition1) upon reconfiguring the vmware installation to use the partition1 config, it started working fine again.

the windeploy log says :

[windeploy.exe] ------------------------------------------------
2013-05-22 20:11:28, Info                         [windeploy.exe] WinDeploy.exe launched with command-line []...
2013-05-22 20:11:28, Info                         [windeploy.exe] LogBootDeviceInfo:The firmware boot device ARC path is [multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)] and NT path is [\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1].
2013-05-22 20:11:28, Info                         [windeploy.exe] LogBootDeviceInfo:The system boot device ARC path is [multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)] and NT path is [\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1].
2013-05-22 20:11:28, Warning                      [windeploy.exe] SetupCl has pending operations; blocking deployment process until they've been completed.
2013-05-22 20:11:28, Error                        [windeploy.exe] Failure occured during online installation.  Online installation cannot complete at this time.; hr = 0x8007139f

Old thread, I know, but I'm having the exact same problem. Hangs on startup after imaging, but proceeds fine after a restart.

I noted the time when it started up, waited 5 min, then forced restart. The Sysprep logs don't show anything until the second restart, so it seems more of a general hang with Windows.

I'm starting to wonder if it's disk related and how I captured the image (Altiris).