Multiple Identical Systems - Easy Way to load XP on All

[DREAMSOURCE]

I am building 6 identical PC platforms for my company. They will all run XP Pro. I am looking for a good way to quickly load XP on the hard drives without having to sit through the loading process for every one. I was wondering if anyone has experience with this type of procedure. I am looking into some of the cloning software packages but was not certain what the activation implications would be. I would like to install XP on one drive and just copy it to the others particularly after loading all the video card drivers, sound drivers, etc. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, I will have to learn how to do unattended setup or spend grueling hours setting up each individual PC.

Thanks!

 

[Submit]

Powerquest Driveimage

Norton Ghost

 

[wjsulliv]

Norton Ghost 2003 or newer (I believe it does NTFS), older versions only do FAT32.


As far as activation, etc...

This could be considered one of the dirty little backdoors. Companies with volume or corporate licensing (like where I work with 5,000 users) do exactly that. Everyone has one of 4-5 models of computer. When we went to upgrade we built one of each model pc with XP and all the updates etc. and then ghosted the base, activated and company tweaked install onto all those corresponding model computers.

So the legality depends on the licensee.

 

[Ynog]

Actually this is probably one of the reasons why microsoft doesn't require activation on corporate copies of XP.
If corporations are going to do this anyway, why require activation. The company is going to license the product anyway.
So why make it more difficult.

 

[Nothinman]

Norton Ghost 2003 or newer (I believe it does NTFS), older versions only do FAT32.

I've been using Ghost to do NTFS partitions since before they were bought out by Symantec and they've worked fine. There were minor adjustments to the NTFS layout in NT 4 SP6, Win2K and XP but nothing major enough to make ghost not work (just little things like moving the journal to a different default location, but it's identified in the MFT so it shouldn't cause any problems).

 

[spyordie007]

this is one of the major reasons that MS doesnt require activation for volume licencees.

like nothingman said you dont have to have the latest version of Ghost, I've been doing this with Ghost and NTFS for years (since NT 4).

To answer your origional question you should really look at the deployment information on technet and go from there.

-Spy

 

[DREAMSOURCE]

Thanks for all the response. I certainly will give these ideas a try.

 

[cleverhandle]

If you go with Ghost or a similar imaging solution, you'll want to read up on sysprep to avoid potential problems (duplicate machine SID's in particular). As spy suggested, you should read up on Microsoft's recommendations for deployment - there are a few decent possibilities, but all of them are bit more complicated than simply "install and image" if you want to do things well.

 

[bsobel]

Norton Ghost 2003 or newer (I believe it does NTFS), older versions only do FAT32.

This is not true. Older versions of ghost could not BACKUP a system to an NTFS volume from dos. There where no restrictions on restoring to NTFS.

As was posted, Ghost or DriveImage will do what you want.

Powerquest Driveimage

Btw, it's Symantec DriveImage now...

Bill

 

[Nothinman]

Btw, it's Symantec DriveImage now...

Does Symantec really plan on keeping both products alive?

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Btw, it's Symantec DriveImage now...

Does Symantec really plan on keeping both products alive?

Can't comment on our plans as of yet, but hopefully I can answer better the first few months of 04.

Bill

 

[Nothinman]

After poking around Symantec's site and not noticing any more than the purchase press release I figured you'd say that, but I had to ask anyway =)

 

[wjsulliv]

After reading the manual for Ghost 2001 and 2002 I was under the impression you can backup any type of partition (fat;2, ntfs, etc) but that you could only restore to a fat32 drive. I.e. NFTS was not restorable as ntfs.

Is that incorrect? If it is incorrect then I must assume the restored drive must be fat32 when ghost is launched and the restore would over right with the ntfs setup? Otherwise why do they even bother mentioning it at all?

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: wjsulliv
After reading the manual for Ghost 2001 and 2002 I was under the impression you can backup any type of partition (fat;2, ntfs, etc) but that you could only restore to a fat32 drive. I.e. NFTS was not restorable as ntfs.
Is that incorrect? If it is incorrect then I must assume the restored drive must be fat32 when ghost is launched and the restore would over right with the ntfs setup? Otherwise why do they even bother mentioning it at all?

That is incorrect. You can backup and restore to any type, it's the *storage* of the image the backup creates can only be written to a fat drive in those versions. If your backing over the network this doesn't apply.

Bill

 

[wjsulliv]

Thanks Bill. That makes more sense and ties in with Ghost being a dos based program...

Thanks