.................Need a XP 'SysPrep' like tool, for Apps

[thatsright]

Will soon be getting about 20-30 new Dell XP desktop PC's for our company. They come pre-loaded already with XP Pro.

I know Sysprep will automate a few things to set them all up at once, but its not very ideal. So I'm looking for if anyone knows of software that will add & remove software on each dell.

These PC's come loaded with so much crap its ridiculous. I need to un-install: AOL, Music Match, Earthlink, etc. Then I need to configure it for our network, and then install our own applications that we use daily.

Is there software that will configure each XP box like this?

Thanks

 

[Matthias99]

Slipstream a custom unattended install disk with your configuration/apps? If you have the licenses, that might be the easiest way.

If you can get them on the network, and you're set up with a Windows domain, you can probably automate the software installs... I'm not an expert on that, though.

 

[Crusty]

Reinstall one computer, make an image of it and distribute it

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Reinstall one computer, make an image of it and distribute it

Also works, although you may still need to tweak each one depending on the apps you need installed (ie, you may need a unique CD-key for each one, that sort of thing).

 

[eggrole1]

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Reinstall one computer, make an image of it and distribute it

I will assume that since you are getting them all at once, they are identical in hardware. If this is the case the image would be an easy solution. With a standard ghost, you might need to set up network IDs by hand, but that isn't even really time consuming. If you have a ghostcast server I think you can avoid even that.

 

[thatsright]

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Reinstall one computer, make an image of it and distribute it

But then the problem is, 30 Dell PC's all having the exact Same SID: And that be bad.

Unless I'm missing something?

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: thatsright

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Reinstall one computer, make an image of it and distribute it

But then the problem is, 30 Dell PC's all having the exact Same SID: And that be bad.

Unless I'm missing something?

Re-running sysprep on the box would change the SID. Ghost also has ghstwalker which changes the SIDs.

My recommendation: Setup a RIS server to push out your images with the base OS and commonly installed apps. Use AD to publish any remaining "unique" apps on a per business unit or per-user basis.

 

[nweaver]

Altiris Rapid deploy would do this. It is an OS dependent rip (i.e. make the rip on XP, may not function on 2k, probably won't work on 9x).

another option that someone mentioned is automate the installs. Most packages have a silent option. Make a script to mount a network share and install the apps with configurations pulled from a file or given on the command line via the script.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: thatsright
But then the problem is, 30 Dell PC's all having the exact Same SID: And that be bad.

Unless I'm missing something?

Besides what Smilin said, you can also run Sysprep on the original PC just before you clone the image. Then a new SID will be generated on each clone automatically.

 

[statik213]

www.msfn.org