Making an Image for Manufacturer

[James0]

Good day everyone
Here's what I need to do. We are purchasing 150 desktops from Lenovo. I
need to prepare an image using our volume license of Xp with all our
programs installed. These computers will also be joining our domain.
I am told I can send the image to Lenovo and they will install it on the
computers before they are delivered to us.
I would like to hear from anyone who has done such as this before and your
opinion on the best way to do this. I should be getting one of the machines
to set up the way we want it, and I was just wondering about the best way to
handle it after that.
Thanks and have a good day!

 

[R. McCarty]

Is this large purchase likely a one-time event or will you be purchasing
more in the future. The reason is whether you need some type of central
distribution system for imaging. Creating a Corporate/Enterprise type of
image is mostly easy, but needs a great deal of thought and meticulous
attention to detail. Acronis True Image has a Server based product that
you could use to "Push" the image to client PCs which provides you some
recovery capability. Otherwise you could just purchase a Workstation
version and use it on your finalized "Master" or reference desktop. You'll
likely need some form of SysPrep to avoid issues with replicated SIDs
(Security Identifiers). Are these desktop PCs going to be using XP or
Windows Vista ?

 

[James0]

Thanks for your reply,
There will be more purchases over the next few years, this is this year's
purchase. All desktops will be using Windows XP. The ones in the future
may very well be Vista, but that decision will be made later. I don't
believe they want to apply the images here, they want us to send the image
to Lenovo for them to install.
I have read reports that say the SIDs aren't important when joining the
domain, they use domain SIDs. Whether or not that is correct, I really don't
know. If sysprep is not a big deal, then I could include that just to be
sure.
Thanks again