Windows could not parse to process the unattended answer file for pass [Specialize] Vmware

Today I was spinning a new Windows 7 VM in my LAB and I started getting the below error.

Windows could not parse to process the unattended answer file for pass [Specialize].The settings specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup].

I am sure that there is nothing wrong with unattended.xml file. No changes have been made to the xml file for a long time and it was working until today.

Before testing this build what I changed was the naming convention for the VM in my task sequence.

I have used OSDComputername task sequence variable and LABVM^ as a value as below

After above change to the task sequence, the build process started failing with “Windows could not parse o process the unattended answer file for pass …..” error.

I quickly looked into the windows naming standards and according to Microsoft some of the non-standard characters are ("qw#$%^_fg") not allowed.

So I have removed the “^” character from name value and started a build.

That fixed the problem.