Vista OEM

[Nic]

Laptop Acer Aspire 3050 has preinstalled Vista Home Basic. There is no CD or
DVD media for these machines (we have 10 of them and I hate 'em all).
Reinstallation is possible only from "shadow" copy of the Vista's distro,
which creates two logical disks and write in whole bunch of junk progs on
C:/ (Norton, Real Player, Yahoo IM and so on). All these "shadows" and
sharewares are consuming (or simply waste off) about 1/8 of the hard drive
(more than 10GB), also waste away memory and CPU recourses. Uninstallation
process of those junks from each laptop do kill about 2 hours of my work
time.
What I want to do.
To buy or to download OEM Vista Basic distro, make clean installation on
every notebook, reconfigurate them just as we need, make one image media for
all... and be happy.
My question is. Will be one Vista OEM distro work with ten different Acer's
Vista "Product Key" which are on the bottom of every case? Am I thinking
right or somewhat wrong?
Advise from MS personal very welcome.

P.S. I'm a school teacher, not IT geek.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

One OEM media is fine, it is the Product Key that matters. The problem with
a generic OEM though, is that it may not contain needed proprietary drivers.
You want to be sure these are available from Acer or the component
manufacturer before proceeding.

I might suggest that it may be simpler to just get some imaging software to
create a copy of the system once it's set up the way you want it.
Restoration will bring you back to the point of the image, not the
proprietary installation.

Advise from MS personal very welcome.

While there are a few MS personnel that peruse these groups on occasion,
they do not speak in any official capacity. The majority of the assistance
here is peer to peer from other users like myself.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Nic]

Hi, Rick

One OEM media is fine, it is the Product Key that matters. The problem
with a generic OEM though, is that it may not contain needed proprietary
drivers. You want to be sure these are available from Acer or the
component manufacturer before proceeding.

There is no problem. I do have all drivers for this thing.

I might suggest that it may be simpler to just get some imaging software
to create a copy of the system once it's set up the way you want it.

Yes, I do have some imaging software, BUT I don't need images with Acer's
configuration and partishioning. I need my own ones.

they do not speak in any official capacity. The majority of the assistance
here is peer to peer from other users like myself.

Thank you very much, buddy. Looks like, I'm on a right truck, haah?
Just say again, please, OEM distro accepts serials from this little green
sticker on the bottom? Are you sure?

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Yes, I do have some imaging software, BUT I don't need images with Acer's
configuration and partishioning. I need my own ones.

But that's what I meant. Install Acer's image, customize it to your liking.
Use a tool like BootIT NG to set up the drive the way you want if it differs
from the default configuration, then use imaging software to save the image
of what you really want. You should never have to use the Acer restore
process after that, plus you can save it with your applications already
installed, thereby reducing the time it takes to get a user back up and
running.

Thank you very much, buddy. Looks like, I'm on a right truck, haah?

Yep, I've always had better luck in peer groups than I ever got from
official channels. You just gotta know what to read and what not to.

Just say again, please, OEM distro accepts serials from this little green
sticker on the bottom? Are you sure?

There should not be any problem there. Basically there are two types of
media produced, retail and OEM, and the PK's are not interchangeable with
the media type (can't use a retail key on oem and vice-versa), but will work
with any generic distro of the same type.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[peter]

Rick is right it saves time to Image.
I have an Acer 9300 laptop that came with XP and a free upgrade to
Vista....after I upgraded to Vista there was no way to do a restore if
things went wrong without starting from scratch.So I set the machine up the
way I like it ...taking off useless(to me)programs and installing programs I
use to the D partition.I then used an external HD and Acronis True Image to
image the C and D partitions....which is the whole HD.A few weks ago when I
did something foolish and could not boot to Vista I simply used the Acronis
Emergency Recovery CD to boot into Acronis and Restored that
Image.....worked great.
peter

 

[Kerry Brown]

No matter what you do keep an image of the original configuration. If you
need to get warranty work done the computer needs to be in this
configuration or they may deny the warranty. With Acer's I image the whole
drive including the the restore partition before I boot for the first time.
I then boot it once from the Acer setup and create the restore media. Then I
delete all the partitions and set it up as I like it.

 

[Nic]

Thank you, Kerry, for your note.
Somehow I forgot about saving original image... I will do it first.

Thank you everybody.