I have a bulk order

[Martyuk39]

It takes about 15 minutes to assemble a system and about 2 hours to slap on a copy of Vista, install some drivers, AV and get a few updates.

Say I've got to do 10 installations (it's actually about 50 in the next 6 weeks) so I've got 10 hard disks, 10 copies of Vista OEM each with a different product registration key, is there a way of making a master disk and then putting an image of that on all the other disks? Ideally I wouldn't want to have to install all the drivers and updates on every machine.

I've used things like PartitionMagic in the past to back up and restore drives - I assume an equivalent of that might work, but then I'd end up with 10 clone machines. Then I'd somehow have to change registration info - both cd keys and user details. And would this way of doing it be remotely legal?

I'd appreciate some advice.
Thanks
Martin

 

[Billb2]

nLite can make slipstreamed install disks.
http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html

 

[Martyuk39]

Thanks - that's a great start. If I just have to put in one DVD and go away and do something else that's very helpful. By the look of it I need vLite for vista.

 

[nweaver]

software designed for deployment will strip out/ask for keys

Altiris will allow me to prompt for an OS key on first deployment

 

[Martyuk39]

I'm probably a little small-time for Altiris. But thanks anyway.

 

[RebateMonger]

Microsoft has free deployment tools. Truthfully, I don't know what the Vista solution is, but there certainly is one.

I recommend joining Microsoft's Partner program (free) and signing in as an OEM and reviewing the deployment tools available to you for Vista.

 

[Martyuk39]

Thanks - that's really useful

 

[montag451]

What we do sometimes is hook up the computer to a server, but in your case it could be another computer through NIC, have a Ghosted Image of the first installation, and just boot off the network to install the image we want.

Takes 10-20 minutes for a full installation of XP if not many people on the network.