Imaging PC 's that run XP- need help!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris
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C

Chris

I have about 20 pcs that just came in and they have XP on
them. I know how XP has a specific license number for each
PC and without a valid one, the pc cannot receive any
updates. Here is my question. I would like to image one of
the XP boxes after I load the programs I need on it and
then load the image on the rest of the pcs. However, the
other PCs will not have a unique license number. Is there
a way to change that number after the image to the correct
number so I can run any future WIndows Updates? Also, is
there anything else that I should be concerned with when
making an image of an XP machine? Thanks for the info.



Chris
 
Hiya Chris,

The answer you're probably looking for is called sysprep.
We provide sysprep mainly for corporations and system integrators to deploy
images of machines- but it has other uses too.

Basically what it does is, sysprep takes a machine you think will be well
deployed to other machines, and it allows you to "reseal it" which is akin
to removing all the system specific eg. hardware and privacy information
from the computer as though it was a fresh install of XP.
You can then image this and deploy it.. using a sysprep.inf file (which is
basically an unattend file) you can specify a product key for each machine,
it's as simple as copying and pasting each of the product keys for each of
the machines into this file, and commenting out them all but one (the one
you're deploying at that moment).

Where to get sysprep? chances are- you already had it.. it's on the XP Pro
CDROM.
Go to the support folder, and open up the deploy.cab file.
Sysprep is in there, as is deploy.chm which explains how to use it, and
ref.chm which explains the syntax of unattend files and describes how to
configure them.
It is a bit of a learning curve learning this, but once you have you'll be
able to configure vast amounts of configuration information via this file
without physically manipulating the install.. this includes setting screen
resolution, even disabling windows themes should you choose to.
The resealing process should work fine with office etc.

Dean
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